Take Your Power Back

The Unemployed Now Have Their Own Union, and It's Catching on Quickly

2010-02-28T13:25:00.001-08:00

I used to try to rally people for this all the time when I lived in America but instead, I got no support and people called me "Loser, Monster, Liar" because even after earning four university degrees, I still couldn't get a job. Of course, this happened to a lot of people but the corporate-owned media crowed that it was a "perfect economy" where there were more jobs than people to fill them. Of course it was all lies, but as long as enough people didn't suffer, it worked! Work at a liveable wage should be a basic, Human Right in a capitalist society where everyone is expected to pay their way! I hope this works!

By Harry Kelber, Labor Educator
Posted on February 24, 2010, Printed on February 28, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145797/

It's been only a month that a union for the unemployed has come into existence through an ingenious grassroots organizing campaign. In case you haven't heard about it, the union's name is "UR Union of the Unemployed" or its nickname, "UCubed," because of its unique method of organizing.

UCubed is the brain-child of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), whose leaders feel that the millions of unemployed workers need a union of their own to join in the struggle for massive jobs programs.

The idea is that if millions of jobless join together and act as an organization, they are more likely to get Congress and the White House to provide the jobs that are urgently needed. They can also apply pressure for health insurance coverage, unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits and food stamps. An unemployed worker is virtually helpless if he or she has to act alone.

Joining a Cube is as simple as it is important. (Please check the union web site: www.unionofunemployed.com). Six people who live in the same zip code address can form a Ucube. Nine such UCubes make a neighborhood. Three neighborhood UCubes form a power block that cntains 162 activists. Politicians cannot easily ignore a multitude of power blocks, nor can merchants avoid them.

The union is built from the ground up. Cube activists will select their own leadership in each cube, neighborhood, block and higher group as well.

Jobless Union's Encouraging Progress in One Month

The UR Union of Unemployed (or UCubed) already has members in over 300 zip code addresses and 43 states, reports Rick Sloan, acting executive director of the union. Seventy-five cubes are up and running. For the first month, 19,998 people visited the site and viewed over 138,000 pages of content.

The union's Op-Ed article appeared in 62 newspapers, ranging from the "Black News" to the "Mexican American Sun," and from the "Las Vegas Tribune" to the "Senior Life of Northern Indiana." Total circulation exceeded 12 million readers,

UCubed put out three press releases last month, informing politicians in Washington that the union of unemployed will be watching--and reacting--to their vote on the latest job proposals of the Obama administration.

* * * * *

It is to the advantage of the AFL-CIO and Change to Win to encourage their unemployed members to participate in the UCubed organizing campaign. It is important for organized labor to display meaningful sympathy and solidarity with those who have been without a pay check for many months. A large union of unemployed workers can be an important ally in political campaigns and a source of legions of volunteers. When those unemployed workers finally get back to their jobs, we want them to have a favorable memory of how unions stood by their side.

Let's give the unemployed the support they need to be effective in their own defense.

Exposing the Great American Bubble Barons: Join Us in the Investigation

2010-02-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

Go to URL for hot links!

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/145735

Exposing the Great American Bubble Barons: Join Us in the Investigation
By Kevin Connor, AlterNet
February 24, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145735/

A century ago, the robber barons at the helm of the U.S. economy were easily identifiable titans of industry: Andrew Carnegie of Carnegie Steel, John D. Rockefeller of Standard Oil, financier and steel magnate J.P. Morgan. It was easy to draw the link between the robber barons' brutal business practices and their immense wealth; it was clear that these businessmen were, quite literally, robbing the American people in the course of amassing their fortunes.

The influence of today's super-rich is significantly harder to trace. Much of their wealth is managed in opaque Wall Street investment vehicles and byzantine corporate structures. They are less likely to slap their names on their ventures, and their profitable relationships with the most destructive segments of our economy are hidden behind layers of corporate control. In our post-industrial economy, they amass wealth not by producing things with actual value, but rather by riding waves of speculation, such as the housing bubble, to dizzying heights of wealth.

Today's super-rich are not robber barons, but bubble barons: they extract their fortunes from intensifying cycles of imaginary wealth creation and destruction, live at a far remove from their businesses, and evade accountability in the public spotlight. The robber barons stood behind their economic crimes; the bubble barons, for the most part, do not.

Beginning today, AlterNet and LittleSis.org are partnering in an investigation of these bubble barons -- a select group of American multi-billionaires who saw astronomic gains in wealth during the housing bubble, and who so far have evaded all accountability in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Who are they? Where did their wealth come from? Where has it gone? How do they exercise their influence?

To find out, we need your help: Click here to sign up with LittleSis.org and join AlterNet's investigation of America's bubble barons. (E-mail citjo@alternet.org if you have any questions.)

Once you sign up, you'll receive instructions about how you can help with our research. You will also receive instructions on how to use LittleSis, a platform for collaborative research on influential Americans, which we like to call an "involuntary facebook."

We've identified 67 "bubble barons" (also listed below) to target with this investigation. All are worth $2 billion or more, and all have ties to the industries that benefited most from the housing bubble: real estate and finance. Some, such as New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, have enjoyed increases of over 400 percent on what were substantial fortunes in the pre-bubble years. Others, such as former Enron trader John Arnold, are newly minted billionaires.

Following the bubble barons' money will be a key component of our investigation; naturally, this will entail a closer look at their charitable and political activities. Bloomberg, for one, supports public health initiatives through his family foundation. George Soros is a well-known funder of progressive causes through his Open Society Institute. The Koch brothers, on the other hand, are prominent backers of conservative organizations.

All of these fortunes were built on the illusion of a sound economy -- an illusion that came crashing down for most of the country in 2007 and 2008, as record numbers of Americans lost their homes to foreclosure and saw their jobs disappear.

But the illusion didn't come crashing down for the bubble barons. The U.S. government came to their rescue, in the form of massive, taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts and a monetary policy that rewards wealth, above all -- the bubble barons, above all. While Americans struggle under the burden of double-digit interest rates on mortgages and credit cards and see their savings accounts eke out gains measured in basis points, the bubble barons are essentially getting paid unprecedented amounts to sit on their money, simply because they have lots and lots of it.

Ferociously destructive for most of the country, the bubble economy -- albeit in slightly different form -- continues to generate tremendous wealth for the super-rich.

Who are the bubble barons? We need your help mapping their connections and following their money; where is their bubble wealth going, and where has it gone, now that most of the country has entered a period of economic devastation? Click here to sign up. Or e-mail citjo@alternet.org to learn more.

Ultimately, you will be asked to adopt a bubble baron and find out as much as you can about that individual. Which companies has he worked at, founded or owned? Which boards does he sit on? Where does he invest his money? Does he make charitable donations? If so, to whom? Where did he go to school? Who are his closest professional associates and business partners? Who is he married to?

At the conclusion of the investigation, we will produce a network visualization of the bubble barons and their connections, an article summarizing our findings, and a list of the top 10 bubble barons, as selected by the investigative team (you!). All of this will be published on AlterNet in coming weeks, and all participating citizen journalists will be acknowledged as contributors to the research.

A note on our methodology: The initial set of 67 bubble barons was compiled using lists of Forbes 400 wealthiest Americans for the past 10 years. We selected individuals who had seen large, sustained increases in wealth over that period, and had a net worth of $2 billion or more as of 2009 (multi-billionaires). We included individuals with the strongest ties to the finance and real estate industries.

Some notable names did not make the initial list because they did not see net gains in wealth over the past 10 years. Warren Buffett, surprisingly, hasn't seen huge gains since the dot-com bubble, if Forbes' data is to be believed. Others didn't make the cut because their industry was not adequately bubble-oriented (e.g. Oprah, Bill Gates and the Google founders).

The list is subject to revision, so if you are particularly interested in adding an individual you believe fits the criteria, please make the case in an e-mail to citjo@alternet.org or the research group (and be prepared to sign up and tackle research on that particular bubble baron).

Click here to join us in investigating the bubble barons. It's time to hold them accountable!

The Bubble Barons (in alphabetical order):

Sheldon G Adelson
John Arnold
Andrew Beal
Leon D Black
Michael Bloomberg
Donald Bren
Ronald W Burkle
Charles Butt
Steven Cohen
William E Conway Jr
Daniel D'Aniello
Ray Dalio
Stanley Druckenmiller
Dan Duncan
Philip Falcone
Malcolm Glazer
Kenneth Griffin
William Gross
Harold G Hamm
Timothy Headington
William Hilton
Robert Holding
Carl C Icahn
Rupert H Johnson Jr
Charles B Johnson
George Kaiser
Pauline MacMillan Keinath
Peter N Kellogg
Richard Kinder
Charles G. Koch
David Koch
Bruce Kovner
Henry R Kravis
E Stanley Kroenke
Edward Lampert
Richard LeFrak
Theodore Lerner
Cargill MacMillan Jr
Whitney MacMillan
Michael Milken
Paul Milstein
David Murdock
Daniel Och
John Paulson
Ronald Perelman
Peter G Peterson
Marion MacMillan Pictet
Ira Rennert
George Roberts
Julian Robertson Jr
Stephen Ross
David Rubenstein
Donald Schneider
Stephen Schwarzman
David Shaw
Harold Simmons
James Simons
John Sobrato
George Soros
David Tepper
Paul Tudor Jones II
Dennis Washington
Stephen A Wynn
Samuel Zell
Daniel Ziff
Dirk Ziff
Robert Ziff

Solution to the Credit Crisis? The Campaign for State-owned Banks in the US

2010-02-27T07:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/campaigning_state-owned_banks.php

Ellen Brown
Web of Debt
Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:33 EST

While bank bailouts fatten Wall Street, states continue to battle the credit crisis. In the search for innovative solutions, some political candidates are proposing that states generate their own credit by setting up their own banks.

State budgets for 2010 face the largest shortfalls on record, totaling $194 billion or 28 percent of state budgets; and 2011 is expected to be worse. Unemployment has already officially hit 10 percent, and many economists expect it to rise higher.

Continued high unemployment will keep state income tax receipts at low levels and increase demand for Medicaid and other essential services states provide. The existing alternatives are spending cuts or tax increases, but both will just serve to make the downturn deeper. When states cut spending, they lay off employees, cancel contracts with vendors, eliminate or lower payments to businesses and nonprofit organizations that provide direct services, and cut benefit payments to individuals. The result is a reduction in overall demand. Tax increases also remove demand, by reducing the amount of money people have to spend.

Amanda Paulson, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, quotes Arturo Pérez, fiscal analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures, which released its survey of state budget situations in December:
"Unless you're North Dakota, you're probably a state that has had some degree of difficulty or crisis involving finances. It's the worst situation states have faced in decades, perhaps going as far back as the Great Depression in some states."

"Unless you're North Dakota" - a state with a sizeable budget surplus, and the only state that is adding jobs when other states are losing them. A poll reported on February 13 ranked that weather-challenged state first in the country for citizen satisfaction with their standard of living. North Dakota's affluence has been attributed to oil, but other states with oil are in deep financial trouble. The big drop in oil and natural gas prices propelled Oklahoma into a budget gap that is 18.5% of its general-fund budget. California is also resource-rich, with a $2 trillion economy; yet it has a worse credit rating than Greece. So what is so special about North Dakota? The answer seems to be that it is the only state in the union that owns its own bank. It doesn't have to rely on a recalcitrant Wall Street for credit. It makes its own.
Candidates Across the Political Spectrum Pick Up on the Public Bank Model

In the quest to find ways to divorce the well-being of their states from the financial sector, a growing number of candidates are picking up on the public bank alternative. Florida, Illinois, Oregon, Massachusetts, Idaho and California all have candidates whose platforms contain this proposed solution to the credit crisis.

A publicly-owned bank has also been proposed on the federal level. Nationalizing the Federal Reserve (which is not actually federal but is owned by a consortium of private banks) was advocated by 2008 Presidential candidates Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat, and Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate. In 2009, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz said the government would have been better off funding a federally-owned bank than doling out trillions of dollars to private investment banks and CEOs who speculated their way into bankruptcy. Speaking at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on March 6, 2009, he said:
"If we had used the $700 billion to create a new financial institution, allowed it to lever 10 to 1, which is very modest compared to the 30 to 1 that we were doing, 10 to 1 would have generated $7 trillion of new lending capacity, far in excess of what our country needs. So the issue here is not about lending. It's really about saving the bankers. And what we confused was saving the banks versus saving the bankers and their shareholders."

But nationalizing the Federal Reserve faces powerful opponents in Congress. Meanwhile, on the state level the public bank concept is gaining ground, attracting proponents across the political spectrum, including Democrats, Republicans and Greens. The issue transcends party lines. In North Dakota, a Republican state, the state-owned bank was inaugurated by a political party appropriately called the "Non-Partisan League."

Oregon: The Bankers' Bank Model

In Oregon, Bill Bradbury has included a state bank platform in his bid for governor. Bradbury, a Democrat, was formerly secretary of state and has been endorsed by former Vice President Al Gore. His website declares:
"It is time to put Oregonians back to work. It is also time to declare economic sovereignty from the multi-national banks that in large part are responsible for much of our current economic crisis. We can achieve these two goals by creating our own bank."

The Oregonian, Oregon's largest newspaper, reported that Bradbury plans to deposit tax revenues in the public-interest bank, keeping Oregon's money in Oregon. The bank would then lend the money to get the economy going again, targeting small and medium-sized businesses. Interest would be poured back into the state through more loans to start-up businesses, agriculture, and other key sectors. Currently, Oregon deposits hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues into large out-of-state banks, siphoning the money off from productive in-state uses. Many of these banks are the very banks needing federal bailouts to keep from failing in 2008, after years of handing out risky mortgage loans. These banks have now grown tight-fisted with Main Street borrowers, making Bradbury's plan to get money flowing again especially appealing to Oregonian voters.

Bradbury uses the Bank of North Dakota (BND) as his model. Like the BND, the Bank of Oregon would return a dividend to the state based on its earnings, while creating jobs and stimulating the economy through lending. The state bank would not replace private banking institutions but would partner with them, particularly with community banks, providing them with new customers and helping them provide new services. To assure the state bank's independence from existing financial powers, Bradbury proposes that a board of directors appointed by Oregon's Senate should govern the bank, while taking advice from an advisory committee of experts.

Idaho: Keeping State Assets in the State

In Idaho, James Stivers, a Republican candidate for the State Senate, has also proposed a state bank to fill state coffers and protect the local economy. In the first indication of a political shift among grassroots Republicans, Stivers swept a closed-ballot preference poll at the GOP District 2 Central Committee meeting in Coeur d'Alene on February 13, winning the non-binding poll 10-0. Stivers declares:
"An important part of sovereignty is the monetary authority. Currently, banks are allowed to multiply many times over the tax receipts deposited in their institutions. This special privilege is partly responsible for the 'sucking sound' in our local economies, as regional banks send their assets to central banks that are playing the derivatives markets of the world.

"A state bank would restore this privilege to the people in a public trust and would give us the opportunity to back our deposits with the wealth from our public lands."

Stivers sees the bank as a way to facilitate small business startups, end the ability of private banks to cream profits from the public treasury, protect key budget items, and stave off excessive influence from the federal government. He suggests the novel approach of expanding the role of Idaho's Bond Bank authority into a full-fledged state bank. The current banking system, he says, causes inflation, one of the "greatest detriments to a living wage":
"Inflation is caused by the secret tax of the banking industry in which lenders use the multiplier effect to the benefit of their cronies. This secret tax takes the form of a decline in the value of the dollar and results in higher prices. Wages never keep up with this process because its very purpose is to extract wealth from the wage earner to support the privileged classes who curry the favor of lenders. A state bank would restore this privilege to the people in a public trust and would give us the opportunity to back our deposits with the wealth from our public lands."
Illinois: Using a State-owned Bank to Fund Infrastructure

In Illinois, Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney has other ideas for a state-owned bank. Illinois is listed by the Pew Center for the States as one of nine states confronting historic budget problems. In a recent response to the governor's State of the State Address, Whitney said:
"I am the only candidate in this race who proposes to fund public improvements, and promote economic health, without any further tax increases, through the establishment of a state bank, a progressive idea that North Dakota adopted years ago, and that has helped keep that state debt-free even in these troubled economic times. Instead of going into more and more debt, to further enrich private banks, we should be using our tax revenue to further invest in our own State and its people, for the enrichment of our own economy."

The bank would use tax revenues and pension contributions as the financial base to expand credit where it is most needed. Illinois' bank would borrow from the Federal Reserve at the same 1 percent rate as commercial banks. Once the budget was balanced, Whitney's top priorities would be to use the new money to modernize energy infrastructure and promote solar and wind power. To achieve this, property owners of land where wind and solar generators could be located would be lent money through the state bank at a minimal 1 percent interest rate. To secure repayment, Whitney would require utilities to buy power from the solar and wind-based producers at a premium rate. One option would then be to require part of this premium to be paid to the state bank until the loan is returned. This arrangement, says Whitney, would create a win-win situation:
"The bank is paid back. The homeowner, farmer or business investing in solar or wind generation realizes immediate savings on energy costs and in many cases will go from being a net consumer to a net producer of energy. Their greater income will further stimulate the economy. The utilities will have to pay the cost of the premium rate but in the long run will realize the benefits of having a greater, stable, more diversified and decentralized energy grid, ultimately cheaper in the face of rising fossil fuel prices. As economies of scale are realized in wind and solar power generation, the costs will fall, as will the necessary premium rate. And we all benefit from the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions."
Florida: The Commercial Bank Model

Economist and author Farid Khavari, a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Florida, proposes a state-owned bank that would lend directly to borrowers. The Bank of North Dakota usually uses a "lead lender" such as a bank, savings and loan company, or credit union rather than doing commercial lending directly. Dr. Khavari maintains that the Bank of the State of Florida could be launched at no cost to taxpayers by using the state's assets as the reserves for making loans, employing the same fractional reserve lending rules used by private banks today. In this way, he says, the bank could drive an "economic miracle" in Florida, instigating massive job creation, cutting costs in half or more, providing low interest financing to homeowners and businesses, and improving teacher salaries and care for veterans and the elderly, while at the same reducing taxes. He explains:
"The economy is collapsing due to lack of demand. The economy needs money, but the banks are cutting credit, and then sucking all the cash out of the economy by raising interest rates to make sure no one has any cash left at the end of the month. The cost of interest is built into the cost of everything. People already work ten years of their lives just to pay interest in one form or another. The Bank of the State of Florida will end that for Floridians. And this model will work for every state. . . .

"We can pay 6% interest on savings. Using the same fractional reserve rules as all banks, we can create $900 of new money through loans for every $100 in deposits. We can loan that $900 in the form of 2% fixed rate 15-year mortgages, for example, and the state can earn $12 every year for every $100 in deposits. That means Floridians can save tens of billions of dollars per year while the state earns billions making it possible for them.

"State and local government budgets will balance without higher taxes when the BSF cuts interest costs. 6% BSF credit cards will save people billions per month, money that stays in Florida instead of going to the big banks - and the state will make huge profits on that, too. Saving billions in interest costs will create millions of jobs without subsidies just by keeping those billions circulating in Florida. Eventually the state will earn enough to reduce and eliminate state and local taxes while every Floridian has economic security in a recession-proof Florida."

The Federal Reserve states on its website that the banking system as a whole leverages $100 in deposits into $900 in loans, but whether a single bank can do it alone has been challenged. Critics say that while banks do create money as loans, they have to replace the deposits when the checks leave the bank in order for the checks to clear. How this all works is a bit complicated and will be the subject of another article, but suffice it to say here in response that if a bank does not have the deposits to cover its outgoing checks, it borrows from the interbank lending market at very low rates, or issues commercial paper or CDs; and the state bank could do the same thing. It would not be fighting with the other banks for old deposits.

Loans create new deposits, which can be borrowed back from the pool of "excess deposits" thereby created. Ninety-seven percent of the money supply has been created by commercial banks by turning loans into deposits, but that credit machine has frozen up. A state bank could get it flowing again.

California: Catching the Wave

California leads the nation in the sheer size of its budget gap. It too now has a gubernatorial candidate proposing to alleviate the state's credit woes with a state-owned bank. Running on the Green Party ticket, Laura Wells is a former financial analyst who received 420,000 votes in her 2002 bid for State Controller, more than any other Green Party candidate has earned in a partisan statewide race. According to her website:
"Rather than drowning in debt and begging Wall Street for loans, California can institute a State Bank that invests in California's infrastructure, and future generations."

She stated in a comment, "A state bank for California is part of my platform as a candidate for the Green Party nomination for Governor. I ran for State Controller to 'Follow the Money.' Now, we need to Fix the Money. A state bank would keep California's wealth in the state. Rather than invest in Wall Street (we've hit the wall on that one) we can invest in our infrastructure and our future generations."

Legislative Proposals

It is not just political hopefuls who are exploring the public bank option. Therese Murray currently presides over the Massachusetts State Senate. She has introduced legislation that would study the formation of a state-owned bank with the principal aim of boosting job creation in the state. Massachusetts now faces a 9.4 percent unemployment rate. "It wouldn't be in competition with our small community banks," she says. "We've got to free up some credit, and mortgage companies and banks have got to do a better job of allowing people to redo their mortgages."

In Virginia, Congressman Bob Marshall, a Republican, introduced a bill in January to study whether to establish a bank that was owned, run, and controlled by the state. However, the plan was tabled in committee.

On February 16, the front page of the Huffington Post featured an article on the Bank of North Dakota and the precedent it sets for financially-strapped states. Besides political candidates promoting this option, it noted that a Washington State legislator and a Vermont House committee were exploring it.

North Dakota hit the Wall Street wall in 1919, when the Bank of North Dakota was established by the state legislature specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers. For over 90 years, it has demonstrated the success of the public banking model. Other credit-choked states are finally taking notice and devising their own variations on the theme.

Lessons For America From The White Rose

2010-02-26T06:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/02/24/lessons-for-america-from-the-white-rose

Lessons For America From The White Rose
02/24/10
By Gary G. Kohls

(The Heroic College Student Anti-War Anti-Fascist Resistance Movement in Nazi Germany)

Sixty-seven years ago, on February 18, 1943, three courageous, patriotic German college students from Munich, the birthplace of the Nazi party, were arrested by the Gestapo on charges of treason, a crime that was punishable by death. The three, 22 year-old medical student Christoph Probst, 24 year-old Hans Scholl, also a medical student, and Hans’ 21 year-old sister Sophie, were part of a small group of university students whose code name was The White Rose.

The White Rose group had seen the atrocities that were being committed, the loss of freedom, the shredding of human rights and the fact that the war, following the carnage on the Eastern Front, had already been lost. These dissenters were also aware, as early as 1942, that hundreds of thousands of Jews had already been murdered and that atrocities were being committed against the Polish people.

They were also alarmed at the apathy and fear that they witnessed all around them. There were no active resistance movements among the adults they knew. They knew that Hitler’s aggressive war-making and terrorist activities were making Germany the most hated nation in the world and, because of their altruism, their still-intact consciences and out of their sense of patriotism, they felt that they had to do something.

Therefore they began, in late 1942, producing amazingly insightful, well-written leaflets, informing their fellow Germans about the criminal regime they were living under, which most Germans were tolerating without objection. These heroic young people knew that they had to use underground tactics because the liberal printing presses and other media that had tried to alert the people years earlier had been smashed by the barbaric right-wing Freikorps, the demoralized, demobilized, combat-traumatized military veterans’ militia groups that had formed all over Germany following World War I, with orders to crush socialism, communism and the attempts at bringing democracy to Germany. They had done their jobs well, but, when their usefulness was over, they were betrayed and annihilated in 1934 (“The Night of the Long Knives”) certainly with the approval of the corporate elite that had control over Hitler.

The only “crime” that the little White Rose group had committed was the writing and circulating of a series of “subversive” leaflets whose purpose was to awaken people to the atrocities that were being perpetrated by Hitler’s obedient followers and to motivate others to join the various nonviolent resistance movements. They had also been guilty of having evaded detection for so many months, humiliating the Gestapo in the process.

The Nazis thought that the White Rose story ended with the arrest and the show trial, overseen by the notorious Roland Freisler, the shrieking Nazi judge who had been assigned to the “People’s Court” trials that the Nazis deemed most important for propaganda purposes - to instill fear in the people. Little did they know that the executions, by guillotine, only made martyrs of these heroic resisters. Their inspiring lives and the spirit of their courageous stand against tyranny lives on.

I have excerpted here some of the statements from the first three leaflets. The texts of all six leaflets can be found online at: http://www.whiterosesociety.org/WRS_pamphlets_home.html

It is highly recommended that freedom-lovers and anti-fascists read all six leaflets. A wonderful movie about the White Rose movement, entitled Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is essential viewing. The movie utilized newly discovered documents of the interrogations of Sophie Scholl that had been unavailable for previous films about the movement. The official trailer to the German-made film is available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM5A4ETW_Io

Excerpts From The 1st Leaflet of the Resistance
(of The White Rose) – Fall 1942
“Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct.

“It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government.

“Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day?

“If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand…if they abandon the will to take decisive action …if they are so devoid of all individuality, …turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass - then, yes, they deserve their downfall.

“Goethe speaks of the Germans as a tragic people, like the Jews and the Greeks, but today it would appear rather that they are a spineless, will-less herd of hangers-on, who now - the marrow sucked out of their bones…are waiting to be hounded to their destruction.…[B]y means of gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison. Only now, finding himself lying in fetters, has he become aware of his fate.

“Only a few recognized the threat of ruin.

“If everyone waits until the other man makes a start…the last victim will have been cast senselessly into the maw of the insatiable demon.

“Therefore every individual, conscious of his responsibility as a member of Christian and Western civilization, must defend himself as best he can at this late hour, he must work against the scourges of mankind, against fascism and any similar system of totalitarianism.

“Offer resistance wherever you may be…forestall the spread of this atheistic war machine before it is too late, before the last cities, like Cologne, have been reduced to rubble, and before the nation’s last young man has given his blood on some battlefield for the hubris of a sub-human [ Hitler].

“Do not forget that every people deserves the regime it is willing to endure!”

Excerpts from The Second Leaflet of the Resistance
(of The White Rose) – Fall 1942

”It is impossible to engage in intellectual discourse with (fascist) philosophy...At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one's fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of "his" book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): "It is unbelievable to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it."

“If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally…attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body.

“The greater part of its former opponents went into hiding. The German intellectuals fled to their cellars; there, like plants struggling in the dark, away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death. Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system.

“We are not in a position to draw up a final judgment about the meaning of our history. But if this catastrophe can be used to further the public welfare, it will be only by virtue of the fact that we are cleansed by suffering; that we yearn for the light in the midst of deepest night, summon our strength, and finally help in shaking off the yoke which weighs on our world.

“…three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history.

“…the entire Polish aristocratic youth is being annihilated. All male offspring of the houses of the nobility between the ages of fifteen and twenty were transported to concentration camps in Germany and sentenced to forced labor, and all the girls of this age group were sent to Norway, into the [houses of prostitution] for the SS!

“Why do German people behave so apathetically in the face of all these abominable crimes? The German people slumber on in their dull, stupid sleep and encourage these fascist criminals; they give them the opportunity to carry on their depredations; and of course they do so.

“Is this a sign that the Germans are brutalized in their simplest human feelings, that no chord within them cries out at the sight of such deeds, that they have sunk into a fatal consciencelessness from which they will never, never awake? It seems to be so, and will certainly be so, if the German does not at last start up out of his stupor, if he does not protest wherever and whenever he can against this clique of criminals.

“He must evidence not only sympathy; no, much more: a sense of complicity in guilt. For through his apathetic behavior he gives these evil men the opportunity to act as they do; he tolerates this "government" which has taken upon itself such an infinitely great burden of guilt; indeed, he himself is to blame for the fact that it came about at all!

“Each man wants to be exonerated of a guilt of this kind, each one continues on his way with the most placid, the calmest conscience. But he cannot be exonerated; he is guilty, guilty, guilty! It is not too late, however, to do away with this most reprehensible of all miscarriages of government... Now…our eyes have been opened, we know exactly who our adversary is…[I]t is high time to root out this brown horde.

“Up until the outbreak of the war the larger part of the German people was blinded; the Nazis did not show themselves in their true aspect. But now, now that we have recognized them for what they are, it must be the sole and first duty, the holiest duty of every German to destroy these beasts.”

Excerpts From the Third Leaflet of The White Rose - February 1943

“But our present "state" is the dictatorship of evil. "Oh, we've known that for a long time," I hear you object, "and it isn't necessary to bring that to our attention again." But, I ask you, if you know that, why do you not bestir yourselves, why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state system presided over by criminals and drunks? Is your spirit already so crushed by abuse that you forget it is your right - or rather, your moral duty - to eliminate this system?

”Many, perhaps most, of the readers of these leaflets do not see clearly how they can practice an effective opposition. We have no great number of choices... The only one available is passive [but active] resistance. At all points we must oppose [fascism], wherever it is open to attack. We must soon bring this monster of a state to an end. A victory of fascist Germany in this war would have immeasurable, frightful consequences…The defeat of the Nazis must unconditionally be the first order of business…

“Sabotage in armament plants and war industries, sabotage at all gatherings, rallies, public ceremonies, and organizations of the National Socialist Party. Obstruction of the smooth functioning of the war machine (a machine for war that goes on solely to shore up and perpetuate the Nazi Party and its dictatorship). Sabotage in all publications, all newspapers, that are in the pay of the [fascist] "government" and that defend its ideology...the presses run continuously to manufacture any desired amount of paper currency…Try to convince all your acquaintances, including those in the lower social classes, of the senselessness of continuing, of the hopelessness of this war; of our spiritual and economic enslavement at the hands of the National Socialists; of the destruction of all moral and religious values; and urge them to passive resistance!

“Aristotle [said in] Politics: "... and further, it is part [of the nature of tyranny]…that everywhere [the subjects] will be spied upon...and so it is part of these tyrannical measures, to keep the subjects poor, in order to pay the guards and soldiers, and so that they will be occupied with earning their livelihood and will have neither leisure nor opportunity to engage in conspiratorial acts.... Further, [to levy] such taxes on income as were imposed in Syracuse, for under Dionysius the citizens gladly paid out their whole fortunes in taxes within five years. Also, the tyrant is inclined constantly to foment wars."

”Please duplicate and distribute!”

Boycott FedEx

2010-02-23T14:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/boycott_fedex_20100222/

February 22, 2010 by TruthDig.com
Boycott FedEx
by Chris Hedges

Dean Henderson’s career with FedEx ended abruptly when a reckless driver plowed into his company truck and mangled his leg. His doctor will decide this week if it needs to be amputated. No longer able to drive, stripped of value in our commodity culture, he was tossed aside by the company. He became human refuse. He spends most of his days, because of the swelling and the pain, with his leg raised on a recliner in the tiny apartment in Fairfax, Va., he shares with his stepsister. He struggles without an income and medical insurance, and he fears his future.

Henderson is not alone. Workers in our corporate state earn little when they work—Henderson made $18 an hour—and they are abandoned when they can no longer contribute to corporate profits. It is the ethic of the free market. It is the cost of unfettered capitalism. And it is plunging tens of millions of discarded workers into a collective misery and rage that is beginning to manifest itself in a dangerous right-wing backlash.

“This happened while I was wearing their uniform and driving one of their company vehicles,” Henderson, a 40-year-old military veteran, told me. “My foot is destroyed. I have a fused ankle. I have had over a dozen surgeries. It hurts to wear a sock. I was limping pretty badly, but in the spring of 2008 FedEx said I had to come back to work and sit in a chair. It saved them money on workers’ compensation payments. I worked a call center job and answered telephones. I did that for three months. I had my ankle fused in January 2009, and then FedEx fired me. I was discarded. They washed their hands of me and none of this was my fault.”

Our destitute working class is beginning to grasp that Barack Obama and other elected officials in Washington, who speak in a cloying feel-your-pain language, are liars. They are not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. Treasury or jobs from being exported.

The gap between our stark reality and the happy illusions peddled by smarmy television news personalities and fatuous academic and financial experts, as well as oily bureaucrats and politicians, is becoming too wide to ignore. Those cast aside are reaching out to anyone, no matter how buffoonish or ignorant, who promises that the parasites and courtiers who serve the corporate state will disappear. Right-wing rage is being fused with right-wing populism. And once this takes hold, a protofascism will sweep across our blighted landscape fueled by a mounting personal and economic despair. Take a look at Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here.” It is a good window into what awaits us.

“One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out,” the philosopher Richard Rorty warns in his book “Achieving Our Country.” “Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.”

Whoever rides to power on the back of this rage will swiftly broker a deal with corporations and corporate overlords. But by then it will be too late. Dissent will become a form of treason. The security state will be quickly cemented in place. The bankrupt liberal class, which abandoned the working class and the fight for basic civil liberties, will be reviled, discredited and impotent. America will develop its own peculiar form of Christian fascism.

Obama, entranced with power and prestige, is more interested in courting the elite than saving the disenfranchised. The president, when asked to name a business executive he admires, cited Frederick Smith of FedEx, although Smith is a union-busting Republican. Smith, who was a member of Yale’s secret Skull & Bones Society along with George W. Bush, served as John McCain’s finance chair. I guess Obama is hoping for some cash. And Smith has a lot of it. He founded FedEx in 1971, and the company had more than $35 billion in revenue in the fiscal year that ended in May. Smith is rich and powerful, but there is no ethical system, religious or secular, that would hold him up as a man worthy of emulation. Those who make vast profits at the expense of workers and the common good are not moral. They are not worthy of adulation. They build fortunes and little monuments to themselves off the pain and suffering of people like Henderson. Jesus called them “vipers.”

“He’s an example of somebody who is thinking long term,” the president said of Smith in an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, adding that he “really enjoyed talking” with him at a Feb. 4 White House luncheon.

Smith does think in the long term. His company lavished money on members of Congress in 1996 so they would vote for an ad hoc change in the law banning the Teamsters Union from organizing workers at Federal Express. A few stalwarts in the Senate, including Edward Kennedy (in a speech reprinted in the Congressional Record on Oct. 1, 1996) and his then-colleague Paul Simon, denounced the obvious. The company had bought its legislative exemption. Most members of Congress, then as now, had become corporate employees.

“I think we have to honestly ask ourselves, why is Federal Express being given preferential treatment in this body now?” Sen. Simon said at the time. “I think the honest answer is Federal Express has been very generous in their campaign contributions.”

Following the Senate vote, a company spokesman was quoted as saying, “We played political hardball, and we won.”

What happened to our historical memory? How did we forget that those who built our democracy and protected American workers were not men like Smith, who use power and money to further the parochial and selfish interests of the elite, but the legions of embattled strikers in the coal fields, on factory floors and in steel mills that gave us unions, decent wages and the 40-hour workweek. How was it possible in 1947 to pass the Taft-Hartley Labor Act, which, in one deft move, emasculated the labor movement? How is it possible that it remains in force? Union workers, who at times paid with their lives, halted the country’s enslavement to the rich and the greedy. And now that unions have been broken, rapacious corporations like FedEx and toadies in Congress and the White House are turning workers into serfs.

UPS is unionized. It is the largest employer of the Teamsters. Labor costs, because of the union, account for almost two-thirds of its operating expenses. But Smith spends only a third of his costs on labor. There is something very wrong with a country that leaves a worker like Henderson sitting most of the day in a tiny apartment in excruciating pain and fighting off depression while his billionaire former boss is feted as a man of vision and invited to lunch at the White House. A country that stops taking care of its own, that loses the capacity for empathy and compassion, that crumples up human beings and throws them away when it is done with them, feeds dark ideological monsters that inevitably rise to devour the body politic.

FedEx is busy making sure Congress keeps unions out of its shops. It has lavished $17 million, double its 2008 total, on Congress to fight off an effort by UPS and the Teamsters to revoke Smith’s tailor-made ban on unions. Smith, again thinking “long term,” plans to continue to hire thousands of full-time employees and list them as independent contractors. If his workers are listed as independent contractors he does not have to pay Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance taxes. And when they get sick or injured or old he can push them onto the street. Henderson says FedEx treats its equipment as shabbily as its employees. There’s no difference between trucks and people to corporations that view everything as a commodity. Corporations exploit human beings and equipment and natural resources until exhaustion or collapse. They are cannibals.

“The trucks are a liability,” Henderson said. “They are junk. The tires are bald. The engines cut out. There are a lot of mechanical problems. The roofs leak. They wobble and pull to one side or the other. The heating does not work. And the company pushes its employees in the same way. The first Christmas I was there I worked 13 hours without a break and without anything to eat. It is dangerous. I could have fallen asleep at the wheel and injured someone.”

If you have to send packages do not be a scab. Send it with UPS or the U.S. Postal Service. They have unions. Every step, however tiny, we take to thwart the corporate rape of the country and protect workers counts. We would have to do more, much more, but this would be a small start. Like Smith, our politicians have sold their souls. They will not help us. We must help ourselves. And the longer we stand by and permit the Democrats and the Republicans to strip American workers of their jobs and their dignity the less we will have to say when the day of angry retribution arrives.

Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

The Achilles Heel of the New World Order

2010-02-20T12:45:00.001-08:00

AS ALWAYS: THE ONLY WAY TO CONQUER EVIL TO CONFRONT IT AS A LARGE GROUP!!!

http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=15816

February 16, 2010
The Achilles Heel of the New World Order
By Jason Charles

The old world tendencies of war and iron-fist oppression is still present in today's elite ruling super-class, but technology has far outpaced even their diabolically dark intellect and the human dynamic has exploded on to the scene, making the people hyper-aware of the danger they face in this next decade.

::::::::

By Hawk | TruthAlliance.net | Feb. 10, 2009

The Dream of King Nebuchadnezzar as interpreted by Daniel the prophet,

You are that head of gold. "After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth. Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron--for iron breaks and smashes everything--and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay. "In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.

Daniel 2:38-44

This prophetic dream of the Babylonian King speaks of four empires that will rule the Earth, each in its turn. Starting with Babylon the Great and the golden head, each layer grows weaker and weaker representing each major empire in its turn.

Here we are many centuries later watching the collectivist impulse in the human species being carried out once again, yet the dynamics are very different as Unified Europe seeks to pull down the whole of the world into a Global Oder.

This 'new Babylon' has replaced priests with PhD's, Kings with Presidents, merchants with brokers, centurions with drones, and God with the self. The only difference is the whole of the global empire is teetering on the incredibly fragile infrastructure, everything about it says it's going to collapse in on itself.

The lumbering giant, symbol of tyranny and oppression will collapse as its feet of clay and iron crumble before it's beastly weight.

The Golden King

The Babylonian system represents a convergence of political might, economic might, and military might exercising uni-lateral authority over competing populations and its own. Babylon was known for it's great wealth conquering the once rich nation of Israel and many other nations, taking with it incredible riches and the spoils of war.

The support for the Babylonian kingdom among conquered nations was achieved by kidnapping and indoctrinating aristocratic youths into their system of empirical control. They would then insert them back into these conquered and domesticated cultures to maintain the illusion of popular support. These princes who under went Babylonian re-education would proclaim the superiority of their system, and as trade and wealth pored into their cities, discord soon waned among the people in invaded nations as time went on.

Support for the kingdom was waged more in the mind of its subjects than through the swift and devastating blade of military domination.

Babylon through superior economic leverage, and military force of arms,was quite impressive and was able to dominate the surrounding cultures through this method of suppression, but the true show of absolute power was focused in on their own people.

"That at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the golden image that Nebuchadnezzar the king hath set up. And whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace." Daniel 3:5,6

Total worship of the king and his image was demanded of the Babylonian nation states anyone who denied that all power and authority was present in the king and wielded godly authority on the Earth was quickly put to death. Life was good unless you set yourself against the edicts of the king.

The Alloy of Empires

The Babylonian system represents the holy trinity of the god-state, where all power and authority was recognized in one supreame executive that was worshiped as a god.

Every empire goes through a period of expansion and tremendous growth, but due to the corruption and hubris of competing factions with in, the empire will eventually experience a period of decline.

The Iron Legs of the Roman empire prove to be an excellent example of how an empires military can be incredibly disciplined and achieve total spectrum domination on the battlefield but due to the rock star excess and egotistical indulgence on the part of the emperor class, they remained forever politically unstable and subject to collapse.

As a result, empires moved away from the universal executives overt rule, and began to rule by more cunningly covert methods of control. Colonial rule, exercised by the British empire seemed new at the time but was really a revival of the old Babylonian system of waging economic war and buying influence through it's colonial agents. Agents who used the empires vast riches to ensnare the countries support through, treaties, banking deals and taxation to the crown.

What used to take thousands of foot soldiers to conquer, the resources and wealth of nations were now being spoiled through economic leveraging and the backroom dealings of shady colonial puppets with the empire.

The real gut wrenching example can be found with America succumbing to British control through the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The subversion of the old emperical system of monatary control won out against the free people of America bringing them back under colonial British rule without the peoples knowledge. The super wealthy, Bank of England and the Rothschild family simply bought out the American government as share holders of the Federal Reserve Bank, as debtor is subject to lender so is the U.S. Treasury and thus the tax payers subject to the Federal Reserve.

Rebuilding on Unstable Ground

Here we are in the present, this system of colonial rule has developed considerably. Technology has exploded integrating human kind on a level never before seen. Everything has been wired together quite literally in vast networks of computers, fiber optics, satellites and economic channels across the globe.

The lines between commerce, and nation states have been blurred and the global elite have monopolized industries seeking to once again coalesce its power into a centralized empire. The old westernized world of the European elite, which houses the financial and political authority inside the newly constructed European Union, and it's mechanized military partner America have now begun the process of collapsing their respective economies in favor of a universally ruled global government made up of G20 nations.

What seems to be a well orchestrated plan over the last century to erode national sovereignty of colluding nation states has begun, and out of this inevitable collapse a new world order has been announced, in which representative rule in a global union will provide the facade for the real power brokers who remain behind the scenes exercising influence in privatized kingdoms, a council of industry titans that reside outside the law in this technological brave new world.

Iron doesn't Mix with Clay

The old world tendencies of war and iron-fist oppression is still present in today's elite ruling super-class, but technology has far outpaced even their diabolically dark intellect and the human dynamic has exploded on to the scene, making the people hyper-aware of the danger they face in this next decade.

We humans are the unpredictable wild card in all of this, technology has opened our eyes, and danger lurks on the rim of our vision. The New World Order , this old world iron is evil and it must be opposed. As the new Babylonian beast attempts to arise, it will find its feet are in-sufficient to support its un-godly weight.

Weakness 1: Technological Infrastructure

This is probably the most exposed aspect of the New World Order system, the entire military, financial system and 'Big Brother' control grid derives its power from the heavily integrated yet wholly outdated and fragile telecommunications infrastructure. All the computer systems of the world are wired together in a series of networks run by a gaggle of private and government based companies. Linked up by satellites, and telecommunications hubs all across the world.

There are literally hundreds of these network operating centers (NOC) and telecom Central Offices (CO) in each community switching massive amounts of data, plugged into military bases, financial institutions, and even key infrastructure complexes like nuclear power plants. It has been reported that one slip by a contractors shovel can cost billions of dollars of damage in down time.

The beast is literally wearing it's tender genitalia on it's face, and if it gets overly heavy handed the peoples of the world could easily grind this whole system to halt without a a single shot fired.

The technological advances and sophisticated military systems are so inter-dependent on diverse highly specialized manafactured components from companies all over the globe the right cable cut could ground i.e. fleets of F-16's and other key military supply lines to a halt, and in a matter of a year or less would be useless pieces of scrap metal.

NSA, DARPA, the Pentagon, Special Ops and everything is so heavily reliant on this technology if absent the playing field will once again be leveled back to the days of black powder where a man has to face his opponent on a open battlefield.

The elite are working to fix the problem, but it is and will remain to be the tender underbelly of the BEAST system. They sure as hell fire don't want the free peoples of the world to know, but anyone with a IT background knows this to be so and the secret is out.

Weakness 2: The Enemies Tactics of Control Exposed

There have been a number of critical errors on the part of the establishment, believing they can utilize technology to enslave the westernized nations has proven to be a costly error. Yes, propaganda, and t.v. media have shaped our culture into arrested developed dysfunctional, but the exponential spread of information has proven incredibly damaging as people wake up to the systems of sophisticated mind control that keeps men and women working their 9-5 and voting in rigged partisan political politics.

People are now capable of accessing, understanding and disseminating the elites own manuals regarding the complex systems of population dominance. A art once reserved to the upper echelons of dynastic rulers, or confined to the whispers of hidden mystery schools are now the subject of discussion on 1000's of forums across the internet.

The lies used to keep the hegemony of power in civilization under wraps, have already spilled their way into the consciousness of the people. Blogs, radio shows, and guerrilla video news have erupted and give little wiggle room to the current batch of charlatans and salesmen of the day.

Here are few of the tactics the elite use that have quite literally been snatched from their diabolical control freak hands. The information revolution has rendered these tactics useless like an exposed magicians parlor trick.

False Flag Terror Attacks - War build up is very profitable, and if there is no wars then the idea is to start them. How you ask? Simple, dress up your own people in opposition colors have them attack your own stronghold and sit back and wait for the outrage of your people to mount driving the nation to war.

### BAD OBJECT WITH BAD URL: youtube.com ### (If you believe it to be a reliable, safe site, please email us at rob@opednews.com and we will consider adding the site to our whitelist.)

Double Think - Derived from the works of George Orwells book 1984, we see how a person can quite literally hold two paradoxical views in their heads that would quite easily cancel each other out under normal and less politically stressed conditions. I.E. "A country spending it's way out of bankruptcy", "War = Peace", "A jobless recovery" or "we have to give up our freedoms to secure liberty". These are purposely put forth to freeze critical thinking within a society.

Political Correctness - This is a method used to limit free speech in an open society, by setting up protected classes of people, whether religion, sexual orientation, political ideology or race this stifles any type of debate and progress with in the targeted society.

Divide and Conquer - A method to divide a unified group of people into factional categories along political, racial, religious lines. The more ways one can fracture the population the easier they are to manage and misdirect the force of their collective intent. Keeping one freeman at another freeman's throat allows the manipulators the opportunity to seize control amidst the chaos.

Problem, Reaction, Solution - Never let a good crisis go to waste, or just artificially create one. Fear is a powerful motivating force, simply engineer a crisis, fear and chaos ensues, and then people will react in panic, calling upon government to offer up the solution. Which usually means more, military, legislation, and money thrown at the problem giving those in power an excuse for more executive power to be centralized in a person or party who has the perceived "solution" ready to deploy.

Economic Enslavement - The central banking system is a ingenious way to enslave entire populations, simply use the control of money to encourage nations or people to take out loans at interest rates they could never pay back. When the debtor files bankruptcy the bank then seizes all property and assets or real value with in a society.

Destruction of the Family Unit - A incredibly damaging tactic of control is to break up and confuse the long established relationship between male and female. The family being the building blocks of all healthy societies have been targeted by the elite. By confusing the roles of husband and wife through eloborate social revolutions and empowerment movements with in a society one gender over the other and vise versa conflict arises disrupting this basic unit of society and can cause tremendous damage to the fabric of a nation. A society with out a strong family unit raises increasingly dysfunctional and self-destructive children, and is exponentially degenerate as generation passes this behavior on to their children and in turn their children.

Multiculturalism - Another way to destroy a country is to introduce a massive influx of cultures into a society that fail to learn the language and integrate into it's system of laws. The tide of illegal immigrants into the United States serves as a perfect example of this tactic at work in today's world and has proven to be incredibly taxing on the nation as a result, stressing it to a breaking point.

Front companies and co-intel pro - The wealthy have long known it is far easier to fund and train their own people to set up institutions, and organizations that cloak themselves as allies of the their opposition to slowly mobilize support and then when the time is right use their influence to create dissent and confusion with in the co-opted organization. This device works very well in rendering a collective useless and fighting among themselves.

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All of these tactics and more are currently being waged against the populations of the globe in a concise and orchestrated fashion to centralize power and support for the New World Order now emerging.

Weakness #3 Scientific Hoaxs and Social Engineering Uncovered

In order to establish a New World Order, the nation states of the world would have to willingly give up their sovereignty. This has posed a very, very big problem for our would be global masters. Especially here in the United States were we are exceptionally nationalistic. Billions of dollars have been used to create "think tanks" and UN backed scientific institutions to develop white papers on how exactly to do break the backs of nations who have proven to be uncooperative. The problem is most of their global empire is built on the "big lie" which is to say, tell the lie long and often enough and people will eventually come to accept it as true. This only works if information to the contrary is not ready available and easily disseminated which it is via the internet rendering these lies in-effective out of the gate.

You can challenge yourself by determining which "tactics" of empirical control come into play. I.e. "climate change = problem reaction solution". It's easy when you know the elites games.

Climate Change - The laughable "science" of global warming which has been proven an audacious lie to fund and build the bureaucratic constructs of a global system of governance have been exposed as a fraud. Which for the elite has literally been forced fed to populations as a global issue that can only be resolved by a global regulating body of some sort.

The swine flu pandemic - Another hoax that was perpetuated by big pharma and the global health organization body called the World Health Organization (WHO), aiming to create a crisis without a borders that can only be solved once again by global governance.

The War on Terror - Al-qaeda is a global specter and a instrument of political control, and not a real threat in the least. An establishment boogie man to induce a state of perpetual war.

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Eugenics and Population Control - Another false specter with "global implications", pushed into our consciousness. The maxim is simply we need a global government in place to curb the population explosion. This is another false reality, in most western countries population is declining, yet in the 3rd world population is a problem because the rate of infant death is extremely high, making it necessary for families to have 4-5 children assuring a chance of survival.

The answer is to simply economically empower these 3rd world countries which naturally reduces the need for large families as access to medicine and food become readily available.

Instead they and the western nations have been targeted by the global body of social engineers for population reduction. The rise in cancer rates, and debilitating disease in western societies and rise in AIDS and sterilization programs in the 3rd world have risen astronomically. The population is undergoing what is termed "soft kill" extermination programs and have been under way for decades. The water is full of poisons and heavy metals, food is tainted with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and artificial chemicals that have been proven to destroy healthy function in the body. This is by design and has impacted you and your family.

Pulling Ourselves from the Rubble

As more and more people learn to read between the lines in this "new" Babylon system, the less likely the super-class will succeed in bringing their master plan to completion. When one realizes that these tactics and lies are what they have built their power base on, it becomes obvious that we simply can't allow such morally deficient, sociopaths to wield any sort of power on this planet much less universal power. They have shown their hand, the outrage is mounting and like the dream of Nebuchadnezzar God is raising up a new Kingdom, a Kingdom of sovereign individuals that the Babylon system will hurl itself against only to be smashed to pieces. It simply can't stand when built upon a foundation of lies, brutality and a flimsy technological infrastructure.

For those who can see it, we have arrived. The Beast must fall first though, as the system realizes the people have indeed awakened to its dark implications it will attempt to lunge forward without having completed its formation, causing its un-timely demise. Set your spiritual and physically house in order and may God Bless the people of the 'New Kingdom'.

We, The People, Call For Total National Strike April 15-18

2010-02-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!!STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!! STRIKE!!!!

http://snardfarker.ning.com/profiles/blogs/we-the-people-call-for-total?xg_source=shorten_twitter

TaxFree15.com
1-31-10

The spark of Freedom is igniting within the hearts and minds of the people in America, as well as globally, and we all have the moral obligation to fan the flames. The time for taking our freedom for granted has passed.

It is now time to stand for freedom individually and collectively, and make the sacrifices necessary in order to reclaim it. But it is easier than most of us know.

There are only 3 things we need in order to ensure success. We must be Pro-Active, Non Violent, and Massive in numbers. There are over 300 million of us, here, in this country, trying to survive under corporate fascism. It is time to stop the so-called "Wheels of Progress" from crushing our lives and our planet.

Those of us who realize just how much peril our country, our lands, our homes, our children, our descendants, and our future are in, need now to come together in peaceful, proactive non-compliance. The system is dependent upon our cooperation, and thrives on it daily. Those of us who know where we're headed, have a duty to defend our families and our freedoms, but we no longer have to die in order to do that. This time we use our numbers, and we use brains, not bullets.

This time we participate in "Peaceful Evolution, Revolutionary Thoughts, and the Resolution to see it through". This time we stand as one. No longer will we support a corporate agenda that is able to take our money because their privately owned media misrepresents the news and lies to us in order to keep us in the dark. They exploit our ignorance, making it more and more difficult to find the truth, because they realize that if we knew what their real agenda was, we'd stop it immediately.

"You can fool some of the people all of the time; and those are the ones you have to concentrate on." -- George W. Bush "If the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts." ---George H.W. Bush "There's three things to remember: claim everything, explain nothing, deny everything."--Prescott Bush, father to H.W. Bush Those are some mind blowing quotes, but it's not just about the Republicans, or the current administration. This is way beyond party lines, religions, or labels. This is about freedom or tyranny, and more and more of us are learning that every day. No longer are we content to hand our power over and believe talking figureheads who refuse to tell us just exactly where our money is going, while AIG and Goldman Sachs make billions in bonuses and expect us to foot the bill for their Wall Street gambling casino games. This is another great wall that must fall.

No more will we submit to or pay politicians who steal our money while ignoring our wishes.

No more are we willing to allow our individual freedoms and personal rights to be trampled by this out of control, "Government gone Wild", who utilize our own military and police force against us, while partying with our money at an event we're not invited to.

No longer will we submit to "Rule of Law" and U.N. troops who are called "Peace keepers", but are actually foreign troops occupying our land and confronting citizens. We will collectively refuse to place ourselves in harms way, and go about the business of living our lives and becoming as self-sufficient as possible. We will fortify ourselves within our homes and communities, and look to our local county sheriffs for protection against this out of control monopoly.

Those of us who are in the military or police force must honor the oaths that were taken when we chose our positions. We will defend our Constitution against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic. No more ignoring our Constitution & illegal Patriot Act mandates. "We the People" are taking our power back, first individually, then collectively, as we stand for freedom by totally and peacefully withdrawing our support from the government corporation that sold us out generations ago.

"WE The PEOPLE" ARE PUTTING OUR SO-CALLED LEADERS ON NOTICE "WE THE PEOPLE" ARE CALLING FOR A NATIONAL STRIKE APRIL 15 - 18TH "WE THE PEOPLE" ARE WITHDRAWING OUR MONEY FROM YOUR INSTITUTIONS and supporting ourselves and our communities because you've refused to do that!

"WE THE PEOPLE" ARE SIGNING THE LEGAL PETITIONS OF REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES found at www.GiveMeLiberty.org and YOU WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

"WE THE PEOPLE" ARE STAYING HOME WITH OUR FAMILIES FOR 4 DAYS AND SENDING A MESSAGE TO THE DOMINANT CRIMINAL MINORITY WHO HOLD OUR CONSTITUTION HOSTAGE...YOU WORK FOR US!

RESTORE AND UPHOLD OUR CONSTITUTION! If you are unable to do that....... YOU ARE FIRED! "WE THE PEOPLE" DEMAND YOU ADDRESS OUR PETITIONS OF GRIEVANCES

"WE THE PEOPLE" SAY NO MORE TO A BILLION DOLLARS A WEEK SPENT ON WAR!

"WE THE PEOPLE" DEMAND CLEAN AIR, CLEAN WATER, HEALTHY FOOD, SELF-SUFFICIENT COMMUNITIES AND INTEGRITY, FROM OURSELVES, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY FROM OUR LEADERS.

"WE THE PEOPLE" REFUSE TO SUBMIT TO TRYANNY OR GLOBAL GOVERNMENT

"WE THE PEOPLE" ARE SPEAKING AS ONE AND WE SAY "NO MORE"

"WE THE PEOPLE" HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, CORPORATE, FASCIST GOVERNMENT

HEAR US NOW, OR GET READY FOR A LARGER, LONGER STRIKE UNTIL YOU DO.

HEAR US NOW, OR YOUR TIME IS OVER

THE TIME OF THE PEOPLE HAS BEGUN

"WE THE PEOPLE" A FREE PEOPLE, UNITED IN THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM WILL WITHOLD OUR SUPPORT UNTIL YOU HONOR OUR DEMANDS

POWER TO THE PEOPLE THROUGH PEACEFUL UNITY

WWW.TAXFREE15.COM

JOIN US! STAND FOR FREEDOM! Weekly Conference Calls: Saturday mornings, 9 am Pacific 712-775-7200 Access code 431669#

LET THE MESSAGE OF FREEDOM RING LOUDLY ALL ACROSS AMERICA AND THEN RESONATE LOUDLY THROUGHOUT THE WORLD!

Liberals Continue to Push for Financial Transaction Tax

2010-02-20T12:29:00.001-08:00

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/liberals-continue-to-push-for-financial-trades-tax-2010-02-16?reflink=MW_news_stmp

February 17, 2010 by The Wall Street Journal
by Ronald D. Orol

WASHINGTON - As policymakers in the U.S. and Europe contemplate mechanisms to ward off another economic near-collapse, one idea is gaining traction among liberals at the same time as it is infuriating conservatives: a financial transactions tax.

Democratic lawmakers and other advocates are pressing for the creation of a sales tax applied to stocks, derivatives and other financial instruments. The idea has been around for decades. In fact, there was just such a tax in the United States from 1914 to 1966. The U.K. raises more than $30 billion a year on a tax that applies only to stocks.

Backers of financial transaction tax -- including labor unions and liberal groups -- argue that even with the major decline in stock and derivatives transactions stemming from the tax -- some estimate as much as a 50% decline in volume of trades -- such a fee could raise more than $100 billion a year to fight the deficit, create jobs or other purposes.

Proponents of the tax also argue it would dampen financial speculation and hyper-trading would diminish, which they say contributed to the bubble that led, in part, to the crisis in 2008.

Opponents of the tax contend that it will increase the volatility of stock prices, reduce liquidity and efficiency of the financial markets, and at the same time raise the cost of transactions for long-term "average Joe" investors directly -- or indirectly, through their retirement savings funds.

Critics argue that the kind of trading the tax would eliminate -- mostly a form of high-frequency trading that by some estimates represents 70% of all the trades on an average day -- did not cause the financial crisis. Securities groups contend that the tax could undermine the tentative economic recovery underway and stifle job creation.

White House not sold on the idea
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., introduced a financial transaction tax in December, which would impose a 0.25% fee on stock transactions. Derivatives swaps would be taxed at a rate of 0.02%, based on the bill, which has 27 supporters in the House. Sen. Tom Harkin, D- Iowa, is working on legislation in the Senate that would tax stock transactions to generate revenues to help reduce the deficit.

"We need something to damp down speculation and raise revenues," DeFazio said.

Nevertheless, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the Obama administration isn't on board with the efforts. Rather than back a transaction tax, the White House proposes taxing financial institutions with $50 billion or more in assets to cover the remaining cost of a financial rescue package.

In addition to Geithner, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who is an advisor to Obama, has expressed reservations about it.

Nevertheless advocates are organizing events on Capitol Hill, seeking to generate support for the measure. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, argues that a transaction tax would result in a major decline in the volume of trading, which he says would be a good thing because it could reduce volatility, increase efficiency and dampen the kind of speculation bubble and busts that led to the recent financial crisis.

"It may lead to situations that are less prone to the sort of speculative run-ups that we have seen in markets in recent years," Baker told participants at an event organized by Public Citizen.

Baker argues that the financial industry is akin to the trucking business in that it is an intermediary that brings goods -- in this case investments -- from point A to point B. However, he points out that, unlike the trucking industry, the financial industry has exploded over the past three decades relative to the size of the economy and is now five times as large as in the 1970s.

"Are we more secure in our savings? Do we think capital has been allocated better? It's hard to argue that that is the case," Baker said. "Why would we want more people employed in trucking if they are not better able to bring goods from point A to point B? If we reduce the volume of trading, without impeding the financial sector in securing our savings, allocating capital, that's a benefit for the economy."

High-frequency trading has its place
However, Georgetown University Professor James Angel argues that high-frequency investors would be discouraged from conducting trades if a financial transaction tax were imposed, raising investor costs. He argues that these traders improve market efficiency and reduce costs for all investors by slicing away the spread price between what a buyer is willing to pay and a seller is willing to sell for.

"The bid-ask spread is a major transaction cost that has gone down significantly, in part, because of high-frequency traders and that helps all investors," Angel said.

The removal of high-frequency traders from the markets would lead to small differences in prices, known as mispricings, of stocks trading on different exchanges, he added, as well as distorting the price of exchange-traded funds.

"You would see a lot more noise in the markets," Angel said.

A transaction tax, he argues would have a negative impact on the markets because these arbitrageurs take advantage of mispricings, between different markets and stock exchanges, leading to corrections in prices. For example, a high-frequency trader who sees the same stock trade on different exchanges -- a corporation's ordinary stock in the U.K. and its American Depository Receipt, or ADR, in the U.S -- at different prices will make investments that ultimately bring the prices in line with each other.

"That linkage between a stock in the U.S. and the U.K. makes it possible for U.S. investors to diversify their portfolio globally," Angel said. "It allows you to trade something that looks like a U.S. stock in the U.S. hours for a company that might be housed in a different country, with a different language."

With even a small transaction tax, these high-frequency traders would lose their incentive to trade, in part, because the pennies they earn on a trade would be offset by the tax.

Pension fund investors
DeFazio's bill -- on its face-- would exempt pension funds, mutual funds, education and health savings accounts. It also exempts the first $100,000 of annual transactions, as a means of helping out smaller investors.

However, Georgetown's Angel argues that the average pension fund would not be free from the impact of a transaction tax even with exemptions for pension fund investors in the bill.

That's because mutual fund managers buying and selling stock on behalf of pensioners would pay the tax, plus suffer from wider bid-ask spreads, Georgetown's Angel points out.

International cooperation?
Most observers of the proposed tax contend that it would likely need to be proposed jointly by a number of countries. Baker points out that France, Germany and other European countries have expressed an interest in their own financial transaction tax.

"There seems little doubt that if the United States pushed for such taxes at the G-20 or other international forums that it could count on considerable cooperation from other countries," Baker said.

Liberals Continue to Push for Financial Transaction Tax

2010-02-20T12:29:00.000-08:00

Brazilian Farmers Declare War on Monsanto

2010-02-20T11:51:00.001-08:00

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20196.cfm

Brazilian Farmers Declare War on Monsanto
GM Watch, Feb 9, 2010
Straight to the Source

EXTRACT: When it arrives at the warehouses the grain is tested and identified as GMO or non-GMO. The problem occurs when, in many cases, conventional oleaginous seeds are contaminated and the growers end up having to pay royalties [to Monsanto] without having acquired any GMO seeds in the first place.
---
---
War against Monsanto
Marcondes Maciel and Tania Rauber
Diario de Cuiaba [Brazil], 29 January 2010
http://www.diariodecuiaba.com.br

• In Cuiaba, Aprosoja is preparing a court action against Monsanto, and in Sinop, steps are being taken to follow suit

[English translation courtesy Cert ID Brazil and GM-free Ireland]

Growers in [the Brazilian State of] Mato Grosso have declared war against Monsanto, the multinational corporate owner of the GMO soya technology known as RR (Roundup Ready). After exhausting all attempts to engage the company in dialogue, the growers are now considering legal action. In Cuiaba, Aprosoja (the Association of Soya and Corn Producers Association of the State of Mato Grosso) is preparing a lawsuit. In Sinop (500km North of Cuiaba) the growers are looking to sue the company as well.

Aprosoya wants to determine if the [patent] royalty fee paid by the soya growers is actualy due. "We want to know what sort of patent is generating this type of fee, because depending on the type, the company does not have the right to charge us anything at all. We also need to know the patent's validity period," explains the President of Aprosoja, Mr. Glauber Silveira.

In Mato Grosso, growers increased the cultivated area of GMOs from 2.6 million hectares (2008/09 crop) to approximately 3 million hectares in this year's crop. The expansion of the area will increase Monsanto's profit from R$39 million (*15.2m) to R$45 million (*15.6m), an increase of 15.38%. According to calculations made by the producers, the fee Monanto charged for the use of its patent amounts to R$15.00 (*5.85) per hectare.

Aprosoja intends to issue a notification demanding that Monsanto provide proper justification regarding the royalty fees. "We have been informed that Monsanto is inducing the seed producers of Mato Grosso to provide only GMO seeds", denounces Mr. Silveira. In Mato Grosso the GMO plantation now occupies half of the entire cultivated area of soya, comprising about 6 million hectares.

SINOP - Following several meetings without any positive results, the Sinop Rural Union is also planning to sue Monsanto. Approximately 50% of the crop fields in the Northern Region of Mato Grosso are currently cultivated with GMO varieties. These differ from the conventional because of their resistance to herbicides containing glyphosate, used in desiccation before and after planting to eliminate all kinds of weeds.

This kind of resistance enables the growers to apply the herbicide on the soya only, thus reducing their production costs and the number of herbicide applications. But the sectors' questions concern the royalty fees imposed by Monsanto for their use of the seed.

The president of the Union, Mr. Antônio Galvan, explained that two collections are made: The first one being when the seed is bought (by bank order). "In January they charged R$0.45 per kilo of seed, which is equivalent to 30% of the price of each sack.

The main questioning lies on the second collection which is made when the product is leaving the fields. When it arrives at the warehouses the grain is tested and identified as GMO or non-GMO. The problem occurs when, in many cases, conventional oleaginous seeds are contaminated and the growers end up having to pay royalties without having acquired any GMO seeds in the first place.

This contamination occurs in the fields by means of pollination or at the time of planting, as well as at the time of stocking the harvest. "Cross pollination may take place if there's a field of GMO soya next to a Non-GMO one at flowering time. Contamination can also take place if the machines are not well cleaned at harvest time, and some GMO beans remain. In this way, they will be considered GMO when they are tested".

Globalization Is Killing the Globe: Return to Local Economies

2010-02-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/08-5

February 8, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
by Thom Hartmann

Globalization is killing Europe, just as it's already wiped out much of the American middle class.

Spain and Greece are facing immediate crises that many other European nations see on the near horizon: aging boomer workers are retiring with healthy benefit packages, but the younger workers who are paying for those benefits aren't making anything close to the income (or, therefore, paying the taxes) that their parents did.

Globalists/corporatists/conservative "free market" and "flat earth" advocates say this is a great opportunity to cut benefits for the old folks (and for the young folks in the future), thus bringing the countries budgets back into balance, and this story is the main corporate media storyline.

But it overlooks the real issue (and the real solution): how globalization is killing these nations' economies and what can be done about it.

From the days of Adam Smith, classical economics pointed out that manufacturing and extraction are the only two ways to "create wealth."

"Wealth" is different from "income." Wealth is value, which endures at least for some time. Income is simply compensation for work. If you wash my car for $10 and I mow your lawn for $10, we have a GDP of $20 and it looks like we both have income and economic activity. But no wealth has been created, just income.

On the other hand, if I build your car, I'm creating something of value. And if you turn my lawn into a small farm that produces food we can all eat, you're creating something of value. Not only do we have an "economy" with a "GDP," we also have created wealth.

A stick on the ground has no commercial value, but if you add labor to it by carving it into an axe handle -- a thing of commercial value -- you have "created wealth." Similarly, metals in the ground have no commercial value, but when you add labor to them by extracting, refining, and forming them into products, you "create wealth." Even turning seeds and dirt and cows into hamburgers is a form of manufacturing and creates wealth.

This is the "Wealth of Nations" that titled Adam Smith's famous 1776 book.

On the other hand, when a trader at Goldman Sachs makes a "profit" trading stocks, bonds, or currencies, no wealth whatsoever is created. In fact, to the extent that that trader takes millions in commissions, pay, and bonuses, he's actually depleting the wealth of the nation (particularly to the extent that he moves his money offshore to save or invest, as many do).

To use the United States as an example, in the late 1940s and early 1950s manufacturing accounted for a high of 28 percent of our total gross domestic product (and much of the rest of the economy like agriculture that, in a classical sense is "manufacturing" wasn't even included in those numbers), and when Reagan came into office it was at a strong 20 percent. Today it's about ten percent of our GDP.

What this means is that we're creating less wealth here, because we're not making much anymore. (And the biggest growth in American manufacturing has been in the military sector, where goods are made that are then destroyed when they explode over foreign cities, causing even more of our wealth to vanish.)

The main effect of the globalism fad of the past 30 yearrs -- lowering the protective barriers to trade that countries for centuries have used to make sure their own local economies are self-sufficient -- has been to ship manufacturing (the creation of wealth) from developed nations to developing nations. Transnational corporations love this, because in countries with lower labor costs and few environmental and safety regulations, it's more profitable to manufacture products. They then sell those products in the "mature" countries -- the places that used to manufacture -- and people burn through the wealth they'd accumulated in the earlier manufacturing days (home equity, principally, along with savings and lines of credit) to buy these foreign-manufactured goods.

At first, it looks like a good deal to consumers in developed nations. Goods are cheaper! But over a decade or two or three, as the creation of real wealth is reduced and the residue of the old wealth is spent, the developed nations become progressively poorer and poorer. At the same time, the "developing" nations become wealthier -- because those are the places that are producing real wealth.

Which brings us to Spain and Greece -- and the problem of all developed nations including the USA. So long as globalism continues apace, the transnational corporations and their CEOs will continue to become fabulously wealthy. But, more importantly, they also acquire the political power that comes with that control of economies.

So they tell us that instead of putting back into place tariffs, domestic content laws, and other "protectionist" policies that built America from the time the were first proposed by Alexander Hamilton in 1791 (and largely adopted by Congress in 1793) until they were dismantled by Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush, we should instead simple "accept the reality" that we're "living beyond our means" and we have to "cut back our wages and social programs."

In other words, they get richer, our nations become poorer, and national sovereignty is reduced.

Nations -- and in large countries like the USA, even states -- must again rebuild their manufacturing base and become locally self-sufficient, so their own consumers are buying products manufactured by their own workers.

"But won't that make Wal-Mart's stuff more expensive?" whine the flat-earthers.

Yes, it will. But most Americans (and Greeks and Spaniards) would gladly pay 10 percent more for the goods in their stores if their paychecks were 20 percent higher. And manufacturing paychecks have always been higher, because manufacturing is where "true wealth" is generated (thus the basis for most union movements, which further guarantee healthy worker income and benefits).

The transnational corporations benefiting from globalization are also, in most cases, the transnational corporations that own our media, so even the word globalization is rarely heard in reports on economic crises around the world.

But globalization is the villain here, and one that needs to be taken in hand and brought under control quickly if we don't want to see virtually the nations of the world end up subservient to corporate control, a new form of an ancient economic system known as feudalism.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program The Thom Hartmann Show. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It," and "Cracking The Code: The Art and Science of Political Persuasion." His newest book is Threshold: The Crisis of Western Culture.

Activists Want Makers to Come Clean on Cleansers

2010-02-20T11:34:00.000-08:00

The corporate killers for the status quo have to make sure they poison us while they make a profit on it...

http://www.commondreams.org/print/52524

February 5, 2010 by Associated Press
Activists Want Makers to Come Clean on Cleansers
by Jennifer Peltz

NEW YORK - It's the mystery under the kitchen sink.

Exactly what's in floor cleaner? What's stain remover made of? And what effects, if any, might they have on human health or the environment?

Environmental advocates want to know, and they asked a court Thursday to use a 1971 New York state law to force such manufacturers as Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive to reveal just what makes up such household staples as Ajax, Ivory soap and Tide.

The cleanser industry - which recently ramped up voluntary efforts to unveil product ingredients - says that the legal case is unwarranted, and that fears about health risks are misinformed.

But groups including the American Lung Association and the Sierra Club want the public to know more.

Members "want access to the information so they can determine the kind of chemicals that they are introducing into their homes and whether there are any risks associated with them," Keri Powell, an attorney for the environmental firm Earthjustice, told a state judge at a hearing Thursday.

A victory in the New York case would require companies to report their contents only to the state. But the advocates hope it will fuel nationwide reform of regulations on chemicals in cleaners and other products.

The case comes amid growing concerns about potential toxins lurking in consumer goods, from the heavy metal cadmium in jewelry to the chemical bisphenol A in baby bottles. While lawyers argued the cleaning-products case in New York, a Senate subcommittee in Washington held a hearing to examine current science on the public's exposure to toxic chemicals.

Some studies have linked cleaning product components to asthma, antibiotic resistance, hormone changes and other health problems. The industry's major trade group, the Soap and Detergent Association, assails the research as flawed, says the products are safe if used correctly and notes that cleaning can itself help stop the spread of disease.

Federal environmental laws don't require most household cleaning products to list their ingredients, though there are congressional proposals to change that. The Consumer Product Safety Commission requires hazard warning labels on some cleansers, and the National Institutes of Health offer some health and safety information for hundreds of cleaning products, drawn from data gathered for industrial use.

Cleanser industry groups unveiled their own ingredient-listing initiative last month, offering information on participating manufacturers' Web sites. New York-based Colgate-Palmolive Co., Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co. and several other industry heavyweights are participating.

"We think we've done it in a meaningful way that provides more information than ever before," Soap and Detergent Association spokesman Brian Sansoni said.

Environmental advocates welcome the disclosures but say they are too selective and vague - some components can be listed simply as "fragrance" or "dye," for instance.

"We must be careful about exposures for all household chemicals," said Joseph A. Gardella Jr., a Sierra Club member from Buffalo.

The activists say only regulation can insure full disclosure, and they hope the New York law can serve as a model.

The law and subsequent regulations authorized the state Department of Environmental Conservation to make manufacturers detail household cleaning products' ingredients, as well as any company-led research on the products' health and environmental effects.

The DEC, and the companies fighting the lawsuit, say the law allows but doesn't require the agency to collect the data. The companies have said in legal papers they would make the disclosures if required but haven't been officially asked.

"The DEC has never enforced these regulations," John J. Kuster, a lawyer for New York-based Colgate-Palmolive, told the judge Thursday.

The companies - also including Church & Dwight Co. Inc., Procter & Gamble and Reckitt-Benckiser Inc. - asked a state Supreme Court judge to dismiss the case. There's no definite timeframe for a ruling.

Reckitt-Benckiser, a British company with its U.S. headquarters in Parsippany, N.J., makes products including Lysol and Woolite. Princeton, N.J.-based Church & Dwight makes Arm & Hammer cleaners, among other items.

Some other companies have sent ingredient lists to the DEC since Earthjustice and other organizations began asking in 2008.

Seventh Generation, which prides itself on its environmental bona fides, already listed ingredients on most of its cleaning products' packages. But the Burlington, Vt.-based company said it released more detailed information to the New York environmental agency, including the percentage of various ingredients within cleaners.

"We thought it was the right thing to do," said Dave Rapaport, Seventh Generation's senior director of corporate consciousness.

The DEC is looking at ways to publicize such information for consumers who want it, spokeswoman Maureen Wren said.

© 2010 Associated Press

Donors Reward Dems Who Pushed Public Option

2010-02-20T11:32:00.001-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/05/donors-reward-dems-who-pu_n_449859.html

February 5, 2010 by Huffington Post
Donors Reward Dems Who Pushed Public Option
by Ryan Grim

Liberal bloggers have quietly raised nearly $90,000 in the past few days to reward three freshman House Democrats for organizing an effort to put the public health insurance option back into the Senate health care debate.

The three representatives -- Alan Grayson (Fla.), Chellie Pingree (Maine), and Jared Polis (Colo.) and -- have so far received more than $20,000 each, with the rest going to Howard Dean's Democracy for America group and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which organized the campaign and set up website to raise funds.The three representatives -- Chellie Pingree (Maine), Jared Polis (Colo.) and Alan Grayson (Fla.) -- have so far received more than $20,000 each, with the rest going to Howard Dean's Democracy for America group and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which organized the campaign and set up this website.

"It was easy to raise money for [the three members] because they did exactly what voters consistently say they want Democrats to do," said PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor. "They fought for bigger change instead of smaller change, and by fighting for the public option they showed they were willing to directly challenge corporate power on behalf of everyday people."

Grayson delivered a petition with tens of thousands of names to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) calling on him to re-insert the public option if he planned to make changes to the Senate bill using the majority-rule process known as budget reconciliation.

Pingree and Polis, meanwhile, circulated a letter calling on Reid to do the same. Some Democrats privately worried at the time that the letter would garner fewer than the 65 signatures that an earlier demand letter had pulled in and indicate fading support.

Instead, 117 members signed the letter, thanks in part to thousands of calls generated by PCCC, DFA and Credo Action to Democratic offices, urging them to sign. The action is an example of the kind of inside-outside coordination that progressives in Congress rarely engage in.

Still, it likely won't be enough to sway the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on a conference call with bloggers this week. Instead, she said, the Senate is most likely going to conform to the deal that was struck between the White House, the Senate and the House before the Senate Democratic caucus lost its 60th vote.

"They have to do what they have to do to get whatever they need to move the process along," Pelosi said. "I totally respect the process that they are going forward with and I also respect my members' enthusiasm for initiatives that we felt strongly about in the House bill. I don't know that that enthusiasm was shared across the board in all three elements of the negotiation."

The enthusiasm for the freshman effort does show, at least, that there is a reward -- beyond public support -- for Democrats who push policies favored by the progressive base.

"The $60,000 we raised in 24 hours for these Healthcare Heroes is an example of how the Democratic base rewards bold leadership and those willing to fight for a public option," said DFA's political director Charles Chamberlain. "It's time for Washington insiders to wake up to the fact that following Joe Lieberman's lead will depress the Democratic base in 2010 and result in big losses, while following the lead of these Healthcare Heroes will fire up Obama voters who still want real change."
© 2010 Huffington Post

Economy Prompts Fresh Look at ND's Socialist Bank

2010-02-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/print/52867

February 16, 2010 by Associated Press
Economy Prompts Fresh Look at ND's Socialist Bank
by Dale Wetzel

BISMARCK, N.D. - It has no automatic tellers or drive-up windows, doesn't issue credit cards, and tends only a few thousand checking and savings accounts. Its only location is a glass, steamboat-shaped headquarters near the Missouri River, where the business moved from its original 1919 home in a former auto assembly plant.

The Bank of North Dakota - the nation's only state-owned bank - might seem to be a relic. It was the brainchild of a failed flax farmer and one-time Socialist Party organizer during World War I.

But now officials in other states are wondering if it is helping North Dakota sail through the national recession.

Gubernatorial candidates in Florida and Oregon and a Washington state legislator are advocating the creation of state-owned banks in those states. A report prepared for a Vermont House committee last month said the idea had "considerable merit." Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore promotes the bank on his Web site.

"There's a lot of hurt out there, a lot of states that are in trouble, and they're tying the Bank of North Dakota together with this economic success that we're having right now," said the bank's president, Eric Hardmeyer.

Hardmeyer says he's gotten "tons" of inquiries about the bank's workings, including questions from officials in California, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio and Washington state. North Dakota has the nation's lowest unemployment rate at 4.4 percent, soaring oil production and a robust state budget surplus - but Hardmeyer says the bank isn't responsible for the prosperity.

"We are a catalyst, perhaps, or maybe a part of it," he said. "To put this at our feet is flattering, but it frankly isn't true."

The Bank of North Dakota serves as an economic development agency and "banker's bank" that lessens the loan risks of private banks and helps them finance larger projects. It offers cheap loans to farmers, students and businesses.

The bank had almost $4 billion in assets and a $2.67 billion loan portfolio at the end of last year, according to its most recent quarterly financial report. It made $58.1 million in profits in 2009, setting a record for the sixth straight year. During the last decade, the bank funneled almost $300 million in profits to North Dakota's treasury.

The bank has the advantage of being the repository for most state funds, which can be used for loans and occasional relief for private banks that need a jolt of cash during sluggish credit markets.

"We think of ourselves as kind of a little mini-Federal Reserve," Hardmeyer said.

The state earns roughly 0.25 percent less interest than state agencies would get from a commercial institution. The bank also pays no state or federal taxes and has no deposit insurance; North Dakota taxpayers are on the hook for any losses.

The Bank of North Dakota was a cornerstone of the agenda of the Nonpartisan League, a farmers' political insurgency spawned by anger about outside control of North Dakota's credit and grain markets.

Founded in 1915 by A.C. Townley, who became a Socialist Party organizer after he went broke raising flax in western North Dakota, the NPL advocated state-owned banks to provide low-interest farm loans, along with state flour mills, grain elevators, meatpacking houses and hail insurance.

Supporters gained control of the legislature and the governorship within five years. The movement's power quickly waned, but two of its state-owned businesses survived - the Bank of North Dakota and a state flour mill and grain elevator in Grand Forks.

From the 1940s until the early 1960s, the bank served mostly as a public funds depository and municipal bond buyer, said Rozanne Enerson Junker, author of a 1989 history of the bank. Its economic development activity has greatly expanded since.

Gary Petersen, president of the Lakeside State Bank of New Town, a community on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in northwestern North Dakota, said the state bank is often willing to take a stake in local development projects.

"In my experience, you make a contact with the (Bank of North Dakota), and their question is, 'How do we get this done?'" Petersen said. "They're not looking at ways to knock it down."

Alerus Financial, a Grand Forks bank, has sold about $115 million of its $600 million loan portfolio to the Bank of North Dakota, both to spread its risk and provide itself with additional loan money, said Karl Bollingberg, Alerus' director of banking services.

"If you're left to find other participating banks, that can be very challenging," he said. "They don't have the same interest that the Bank of North Dakota has in helping you to do deals."

Mauro Guillen, a professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, said it is unlikely other states would open similar banks, in part because "the political culture here is very much against that kind of a thing."

Some state and federal agencies, such as the Small Business Administration, already have economic development programs similar to those at the Bank of North Dakota, Guillen said.

Bollingberg said the idea of other state-owned banks would also likely rouse opposition from private banks that wanted to keep their share of state deposits. "Because the (Bank of North Dakota) has been here so long, no banks know what it was like to have those deposits," he said.

Hardmeyer said he, too, was always doubtful others would take up North Dakota's model, but now he's not so sure.

"When I see what's going on around the country, it's not quite as far a leap as I thought it once was," he said.

On the Net:

Bank of North Dakota: http://www.banknd.nd.gov/

AMERICA NEEDS CO-DETERMINATION ON ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

2010-02-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/AMERICA-NEEDS-CO-DETERMINA-by-ALONE-100212-963.html

February 16, 2010
AMERICA NEEDS CO-DETERMINATION ON ITS BOARD OF DIRECTORS
By Kevin Stoda, Germany

You may ask what "co-determination" is. In Germany, it is cooperation between workers and companies at the Board of Director level. This is something that does exist in the USA but has existed for nearly 6 decades in one of the world's perennial best economies. According to EUROFOUND, "The concept of co-determination refers to two distinct levels and forms of employee participation: co-determination at establishment level by the works council and co-determination above establishment level, on the supervisory board of companies, which is the main subject of this entry." At the supervisory level of all large companies in Germany, the employees have a 50% representation on the supervisory board of the firm.

http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/emire/GERMANY/CODETERMINATION-DE.htm

In contrast to Germany, in Sweden it is 1/3 representation for employees. Similarly, medium-sized firms in Germany of between 500 and 2000 employees have only 1/3 representation on their co-determining boards--by law. "The employee representatives are elected either by direct election by the workforce if they so wish, or otherwise indirectly by a secondary body of delegates elected by the workforce. The shareholders' representatives are elected by the appropriate shareholders' meeting or company general meeting." This practice actually was first instituted in the Weimar Republic, but has its roots in many alternative philosophies. "In terms of the history of ideas it [the concept and practice of co-determination] covers a broad spectrum, ranging from catholic social theory via radical democratic to socialist perspectives."

After WWII, the practice of co-determination was instituted in the German iron and steel industry. Interestingly, these industries were the source of the first great political unification steps between Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in the 1950s occurred in these two industries. In short, this is one reason that one of the three pillars in the European Common Market--and later the European Union--has always been a social and worker or family oriented pillar.

http://europa.eu/abc/history/index_en.htm

"The 1976 Co-Determination Act was passed in the face of strong resistance from the employers' associations . A constitutional appeal against the Act was rejected by the

Federal Constitutional Court
in 1979.
As regards the form of co-determination to be applied in the European Company (Societas Europea, or SE), there are three variants available. The first is modeled closely on practice in the Federal Republic and the Netherlands, and the second corresponds to the French system. The third variant provides minimum conditions for co-determination; here, the form of co-determination can be agreed between management and employees as they choose, but employee representatives must be informed and consulted on the company's business situation at least every calendar quarter. As a general principle the nature of co-determination is, however, governed by the provisions on the matter in the Member State in which the SE is located."

AMERICA NEEDS TO LOOK AT THE EUROPEAN MODEL

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/02/12

Author of "Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope for an Insecure Age", Steven Hill was on Democracy Now today. He noted that the concept of Co-Determination in medium and large companies is one of the many elements of economic and social development which America must consider incorporating if the USA is to learn to handle economic crises with much more maturity than it has over the past 4 decades (or more).

"Co-determination" and social commitments to its citizens for industry and businesses in Europe makes the continent's major exporters, Germany and the Netherlands, particularly strong even during the great global downturn we have seen over the past few years in America (and in the near future). Siemens, BMW, Mercedes, etc. all have "co-determination of workers".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wwq3Q9ODVI&NR=1

In short, the Europe Union--which is facing the possible bankruptcy of several states--including Portugal, Ireland, Greece--is still the largest economy in the world. Moreover, it is set to whether these economic and bankruptcy crises much better than the USA. This is because the USA does not have the social and economic safety nets nor cross-national social commitments that Europe is already displaying to be quite mature.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/12/europes_promise

In this age of uncertainty, Steven Hill argues that European is way ahead of the USA in health care, early childhood development support, education, wonderful transportation options, a greener economy, and great welfare care. The USA is falling short in most of these areas. "Europe has more Fortune 500 companies than the USA and China combined. It has had a bigger GNP than nearly the USA and China combined."

Currently, even France has a lower unemployment rate than the USA. Europe is a place where American investors go to make big returns, i.e. it is not China.

Hill says, "Unquestionably, capitalism has proven itself to be the greatest wealth generator ever, raising the living standards for hundreds of millions of people. What is at issue is our ability to harness that wealth-generating capacity for the good of the many -- instead of the enrichment of the few. That harnessing requires a balancing act, an optimal mix of free enterprise combined with the right amount of government regulation that does not unduly burden entrepreneurship and commerce. Codetermination -- specifically supervisory boards and works councils -- is one of the keys to that harnessing, and to Europe's distinct brand of "social capitalism.'"

NOTES

Co-Determination, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination

Co-Determination is not an Alien Concept in Europe, http://www.etuc.org/a/382

Co-Determination, Efficiency, & Productivity http://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp1442.html

Economic Effects of Co-Determination, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=926100

German Co-Determination, http://www.bod.de/index.php?id=296&objk_id=227261

Hill, Stephen "Economic Democracy an Co-Determination: http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=8239

What Could Be Done

2010-02-16T13:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-Could-Be-Done-by-David-Glenn-Cox-100215-477.html

February 15, 2010
By David Glenn Cox

Where have they gone, the forty million? Have they, like Handsome Johnny, just walked over the horizon to where perspective ends? Have space aliens come down and abducted forty million of our people? We have ten million families put out in the snow, with 300,000 more added per month to their rolls. That's the entire population of New Orleans made homeless every thirty days in the land of hope and change, and this news is greeted with a thundering silence. There's not even a note of air guitar to be heard, or any sign of assistance.

The President has claimed that his administration are 'fierce advocates' of the free market. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, in a "I got your back Wall Street, screw these clowns" sort of way. I myself am an advocate of free boating; let everyone take boats wherever they choose to travel. However, if the boat begins to sink it becomes a question of humanity. You save the people and you don't worry about the boat. Screw the boat.

The President, in his State of the Union speech, proposed a $100 billion jobs bill. Apparently this shrank in the Washington snow and was reduced to $85 billion in the Senate's bipartisan compromise jobs plan. This was crafted by those ever-so-capable and concerned legislators, Max Baucus for the Democrats and Chuck Grassley for the Republicans. Then Harry Reid came in, riding in on a white armadillo, to announce that the Baucus/Grassley plan had been watered down yet again to a $15 billion plan. What's next, a discount card for Value City?

"This is a simplified, focused bill that addresses our core priority: putting millions of Americans back to work," Reid said.

A tax break for employers who hire new workers, yep, can't have too many tax breaks. An increase in highway spending, and an extension of the "Build America" bond program that Wall Street bond traders have been so anxious about. And, of course, number four. Drum roll please, more tax cuts! Ta da!

I read this and was reminded of the Bonus Marchers, tens of thousands of veterans who marched from all over America to Washington, DC in the depths of the last Great Depression for a peaceful redress of grievances against their government. They were asking for the early payment of a war bonus that wasn't due until 1945. The bonus was their goal but misery was their motivator. Many had lost everything and hung on only to their faint hopes for a new start on even just a piece of the bonus.

Tens of thousands of Americans were rallying on the steps of the Capitol Building on the last day of the Senate calendar, and the Senate voted down the measure. When the vote was announced the Bonus Army became quiet. They took the tongue of the dead because they were lost. All of their hopes and dreams had rested on the comfortable, reasoning assurances that certainly their government, seeing their misery and distress, wouldn't just say to them, "Get off the lawn."

Yet that's exactly what the Senate did. So today we have a call for a $100 billion to help the jobless; it is followed up with, "No, eighty-five!" and then, "No, fifteen, and we're throwing in the Patriot Act!" This isn't just some appropriation to assist salmon fishermen or widget manufacturers. This is an appropriation to assist the struggling owners of this country, and the United States Senate, led by Harry Reid, just told them to "Get off the lawn."

So, what would a real Democratic administration and Congress do?

Do away with the withholding cap for Social Security. People live longer and there is no limit on benefits, so why do we discontinue withholding for the affluent after $106,000?

Cut the $159 billion budget for the Department of Boogeymen Security in half with an eye towards phasing it out entirely. It was a creation of the Bush administration with the purpose of consolidating power in the hands of the executive branch. As the recent ball sack bomber so aptly illustrated, these guys couldn't catch Grandpa playing Santa Claus. Travel restrictions might hurt the airlines' business but wouldn't hurt America. Do you think Cubans and North Koreans hopscotch across America's skies? This is a job for the Customs Department, just like every other country in the world.

Cap the defense budget at $500 billion. No kidding, no fooling, $500 billion and that's it. If you can't defeat your nameless, faceless enemy on half a trillion dollars per year then you will have to find another way. Try bake sales, no one here signed up for perpetual war and a decade is long enough, so get over it.

Roosevelt's Home Owners Loan Corporation refinanced fifteen-year loans to thirty years. They consolidated fees and second mortgages into a single note at a below market interest rate. We should do the same thing now, extending new loans to forty or even fifty years with a 3% interest rate. These loans would be non-assumable and the dollar value of the property for the new mortgage would be based on an independent market appraisal.

As it stands today the banks are borrowing new money at .25%; they earn a maximum of $1,500 on each mortgage bailout. The banks hold every card in the deck and the homeowners are at their mercy, and when the bank can borrow a million dollars for $2,500, they ain't got no mercy. The loans would then be rebundled and sold through the Treasury and would cost us less than the lose-lose Treasury Bonds issued every day.

Contact every state parks director and national parks director in the country. Ask for a list of low-cost projects like cleaning trails, clearing fire roads, picking up trash. Then offer thirty-hour per week jobs paying $10.00 per hour tax-free. Not enough to keep anyone from a real job but enough to maybe keep their car or pay their rent or utilities. You could expand that program to feed the workers lunches and continue expanding it by setting up feeding stations for the public.

You use these workers to reopen libraries shuttered by budget cuts. You pay them to offer tutoring sessions to students at these libraries. You begin a new Tennessee Valley Authority and where the first TVA was focused on hydroelectric energy, this one will focus on renewable energy of wind and solar.

You build these wind and solar farms, you train the workers and you save the people and you screw the boat. These monies would go directly into the economy and filter throughout the economy. The money wouldn't be parked in banks or invested on Wall Street, but invested instead in struggling Americans. No trickle down or second-hand tax credits, but direct financial assistance; not because it's left or right, but because our people need help and deserve no less.

I'm sure that clever people could come up with a thousand more ideas. It wouldn't be difficult for those who cared, for those who gave a damn about the people to spend a minute to think of what could be done instead of only how much money could be made.

Time to Tax the Financial Speculators

2010-02-16T05:36:00.000-08:00

Time to Tax the Financial Speculators
By Sarah Anderson, YES! Magazine
February 12, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145660/

For decades, international activists have been pushing the idea of a tax on financial transactions. Such a tax would give us a twofer: a drop in short-term speculation that serves no productive purpose and leads to dangerous bubbles, and 2) loads of money that could be used for good things, like health, climate, and jobs programs.

Today, we’re closer to achieving this two-for-one deal than we’ll probably ever be in our lifetimes. Reeling from the worst financial crisis in 80 years, policymakers are not only desperate for new sources of revenue, they’re more open to rethinking the role of Wall Street and making sure it serves real economic needs.

To take advantage of these new opportunities, a wide range of activists, including trade unionists, international health advocates, and climate justice groups, have come together to move this decades-old proposition into practice. Their efforts are gaining traction—and even some celebrity support.

The specific proposal is to tax trades of all types of financial assets, including stock, derivatives, and currencies. The tax rate would be so low that ordinary investors wouldn’t even notice it. Some U.S. legislative proposals would even exempt retirement funds and mutual funds, the primary middle class investment vehicles. The real target would be the hedge fund investors and other high fliers in the global casino, who make most of their money through high-frequency betting on short-term market movements that often have nothing to do with what’s going on in the real economy. Since the tax would apply to each of these transactions, it would make this type of speculative gambling much less profitable and encourage more long-term, patient investment.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research has analyzed the likely impact of a set of taxes, ranging from 0.01 percent on currency transactions to 0.25 percent on stock trades. Assuming that trading volumes dropped by 50 percent, these taxes could raise more than $175 billion per year in the United States alone.

The call for such taxes has been particularly loud in Europe, where activists have managed to win promises of support from leaders of the three largest economies—the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. But more pressure is needed to make speculation taxes a reality.

In the UK, activists have teamed up with filmmaker Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’ Diary) to put some star power behind the cause. Through a creative media campaign being launched today, they aim to secure commitments from candidates vying for votes in the upcoming general election.

One of the campaign tools Curtis has produced is this video, starring British actor Bill Nighy (who you'll recognize from his roles as Davy Jones in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies or as the ribald aging pop singer in Love Actually) as a haughty banking executive whose arguments against the tax completely unravel in the course of three minutes. The UK groups kicked off their campaign by projecting a giant image of ordinary people wearing Robin Hood masks and the slogan “Be Part of the World’s Greatest Bank Job” on the side of the Bank of England.

In the United States, we may not yet have Hollywood spokespeople, but we do have prominent business leaders on our side, including John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund. We also have bills to create financial speculation taxes in both the House and the Senate, introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA).

President Obama is not yet on board. Recently, he did call for a new fee on the top 50 banks. This is a positive, but far more modest, approach—it wouldn’t directly affect speculation, would leave hedge funds off the hook, and would generate far less revenue.

U.S. activists are hoping to see a shift in the administration’s position by the time Obama travels to Toronto in June for a summit with the leaders of the other G20 big economies. Americans for Financial Reform (AFR), a coalition of more than 200 labor unions, consumer groups, and other activist organizations, has been working to raise the profile of the issue in the media and on Capitol Hill and recently sent this letter to the president, urging his support. AFR is also working with other U.S. and international activists to coordinate pressure on key governments and the International Monetary Fund, which is carrying out a feasibility study of the issue at the G20’s request.

Taxing financial speculation won’t single-handedly prevent another crisis or solve the world’s climate and jobs crises. But for those of us who want the financial industry to serve people and the planet rather than dominate them, this is the most exciting reform under serious consideration on the world stage. And it is an idea whose time has come.

Sarah Anderson wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Sarah directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.

Our Democracy No Longer Works and the Problem Is Congress

2010-02-10T14:00:00.000-08:00

THROW THE CORRUPT POLITICIANS OUT!!!

By Lawrence Lessig, The Nation
February 9, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145595/

We should remember what it felt like one year ago, as the ability to recall it emotionally will pass and it is an emotional memory as much as anything else. It was a moment rare in a democracy's history. The feeling was palpable--to supporters and opponents alike--that something important had happened. America had elected, the young candidate promised, a transformational president. And wrapped in a campaign that had produced the biggest influx of new voters and small-dollar contributions in a generation, the claim seemed credible, almost intoxicating, and just in time.

Yet a year into the presidency of Barack Obama, it is already clear that this administration is an opportunity missed. Not because it is too conservative. Not because it is too liberal. But because it is too conventional. Obama has given up the rhetoric of his early campaign--a campaign that promised to "challenge the broken system in Washington" and to "fundamentally change the way Washington works." Indeed, "fundamental change" is no longer even a hint.

Instead, we are now seeing the consequences of a decision made at the most vulnerable point of Obama's campaign--just when it seemed that he might really have beaten the party's presumed nominee. For at that moment, Obama handed the architecture of his new administration over to a team that thought what America needed most was another Bill Clinton. A team chosen by the brother of one of DC's most powerful lobbyists, and a White House headed by the quintessential DC politician. A team that could envision nothing more than the ordinary politics of Washington--the kind of politics Obama had called "small." A team whose imagination--politically--is tiny.

These tiny minds--brilliant though they may be in the conventional game of DC--have given up what distinguished Obama's extraordinary campaign. Not the promise of healthcare reform or global warming legislation--Hillary Clinton had embraced both of those ideas, and every other substantive proposal that Obama advanced. Instead, the passion that Obama inspired grew from the recognition that something fundamental had gone wrong in the way our government functions, and his commitment to reform it.

For Obama once spoke for the anger that has now boiled over in even the blue state Massachusetts--that our government is corrupt; that fundamental change is needed. As he told us, both parties had allowed "lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system." And "unless we're willing to challenge [that] broken system...nothing else is going to change." "The reason" Obama said he was "running for president [was] to challenge that system." For "if we're not willing to take up that fight, then real change--change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans--will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo."

This administration has not "taken up that fight." Instead, it has stepped down from the high ground the president occupied on January 20, 2009, and played a political game no different from the one George W. Bush played, or Bill Clinton before him. Obama has accepted the power of the "defenders of the status quo" and simply negotiated with them. "Audacity" fits nothing on the list of last year's activity, save the suggestion that this is the administration the candidate had promised.

Maybe this was his plan all along. It was not what he said. And by ignoring what he promised, and by doing what he attacked ("too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in"), Obama will leave the presidency, whether in 2013 or 2017, with Washington essentially intact and the movement he inspired betrayed.

That movement needs new leadership. On the right (the tea party) and the left (MoveOn and Bold Progressives), there is an unstoppable recognition that our government has failed. But both sides need to understand the source of its failure if either or, better, both together, are to respond.

At the center of our government lies a bankrupt institution: Congress. Not financially bankrupt, at least not yet, but politically bankrupt. Bush v. Gore notwithstanding, Americans' faith in the Supreme Court remains extraordinarily high--76 percent have a fair or great deal of "trust and confidence" in the Court. Their faith in the presidency is also high--61 percent.

But consistently and increasingly over the past decade, faith in Congress has collapsed--slowly, and then all at once. Today it is at a record low. Just 45 percent of Americans have "trust and confidence" in Congress; just 25 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job. A higher percentage of Americans likely supported the British Crown at the time of the Revolution than support our Congress today.

The source of America's cynicism is not hard to find. Americans despise the inauthentic. Gregory House, of the eponymous TV medical drama, is a hero not because he is nice (he isn't) but because he is true. Tiger Woods is a disappointment not because he is evil (he isn't) but because he proved false. We may want peace and prosperity, but most would settle for simple integrity. Yet the single attribute least attributed to Congress, at least in the minds of the vast majority of Americans, is just that: integrity. And this is because most believe our Congress is a simple pretense. That rather than being, as our framers promised, an institution "dependent on the People," the institution has developed a pathological dependence on campaign cash. The US Congress has become the Fundraising Congress. And it answers--as Republican and Democratic presidents alike have discovered--not to the People, and not even to the president, but increasingly to the relatively small mix of interests that fund the key races that determine which party will be in power.

This is corruption. Not the corruption of bribes, or of any other crime known to Title 18 of the US Code. Instead, it is a corruption of the faith Americans have in this core institution of our democracy. The vast majority of Americans believe money buys results in Congress (88 percent in a recent California poll). And whether that belief is true or not, the damage is the same. The democracy is feigned. A feigned democracy breeds cynicism. Cynicism leads to disengagement. Disengagement leaves the fox guarding the henhouse.

This corruption is not hidden. On the contrary, it is in plain sight, with its practices simply more and more brazen. Consider, for example, the story Robert Kaiser tells in his fantastic book So Damn Much Money, about Senator John Stennis, who served for forty-one years until his retirement in 1989. Stennis, no choirboy himself, was asked by a colleague to host a fundraiser for military contractors while he was chair of the Armed Services Committee. "Would that be proper?" Stennis asked. "I hold life and death over those companies. I don't think it would be proper for me to take money from them."

Is such a norm even imaginable in DC today? Compare Stennis with Max Baucus, who has gladly opened his campaign chest to $3.3 million in contributions from the healthcare and insurance industries since 2005, a time when he has controlled healthcare in the Senate. Or Senators Lieberman, Bayh and Nelson, who took millions from insurance and healthcare interests and then opposed the (in their states) popular public option for healthcare. Or any number of Blue Dog Democrats in the House who did the same, including, most prominently, Arkansas's Mike Ross. Or Republican John Campbell, a California landlord who in 2008 received (as ethics reports indicate) between $600,000 and $6 million in rent from used car dealers, who successfully inserted an amendment into the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act to exempt car dealers from financing rules to protect consumers. Or Democrats Melissa Bean and Walter Minnick, who took top-dollar contributions from the financial services sector and then opposed stronger oversight of financial regulations.

The list is endless; the practice open and notorious. Since the time of Rome, historians have taught that while corruption is a part of every society, the only truly dangerous corruption comes when the society has lost any sense of shame. Washington has lost its sense of shame.

As fundraising becomes the focus of Congress--as the parties force members to raise money for other members, as they reward the best fundraisers with lucrative committee assignments and leadership positions--the focus of Congressional "work" shifts. Like addicts constantly on the lookout for their next fix, members grow impatient with anything that doesn't promise the kick of a campaign contribution. The first job is meeting the fundraising target. Everything else seems cheap. Talk about policy becomes, as one Silicon Valley executive described it to me, "transactional." The perception, at least among industry staffers dealing with the Hill, is that one makes policy progress only if one can promise fundraising progress as well.

This dance has in turn changed the character of Washington. As Kaiser explains, Joe Rothstein, an aide to former Senator Mike Gravel, said there was never a "period of pristine American politics untainted by money.... Money has been part of American politics forever, on occasion--in the Gilded Age or the Harding administration, for example--much more blatantly than recently." But "in recent decades 'the scale of it has just gotten way out of hand.' The money may have come in brown paper bags in earlier eras, but the politicians needed, and took, much less of it than they take through more formal channels today."

And not surprisingly, as powerful interests from across the nation increasingly invest in purchasing public policy rather than inventing a better mousetrap, wealth, and a certain class of people, shift to Washington. According to the 2000 Census, fourteen of the hundred richest counties were in the Washington area. In 2007, nine of the richest twenty were in the area. Again, Kaiser: "In earlier generations enterprising young men came to Washington looking for power and political adventure, often with ambitions to save or reform the country or the world. In the last fourth of the twentieth century such aspirations were supplanted by another familiar American yearning: to get rich."

Rich, indeed, they are, with the godfather of the lobbyist class, Gerald Cassidy, amassing more than $100 million from his lobbying business.

Members of Congress are insulted by charges like these. They insist that money has no such effect. Perhaps, they concede, it buys access. (As former Representative Romano Mazzoli put it, "People who contribute get the ear of the member and the ear of the staff. They have the access--and access is it.") But, the cash-seekers insist, it doesn't change anyone's mind. The souls of members are not corrupted by private funding. It is simply the way Americans go about raising the money necessary to elect our government.

But there are two independent and adequate responses to this weak rationalization for the corruption of the Fundraising Congress. First: whether or not this money has corrupted anyone's soul--that is, whether it has changed any vote or led any politician to bend one way or the other--there is no doubt that it leads the vast majority of Americans to believe that money buys results in Congress. Even if it doesn't, that's what Americans believe. Even if, that is, the money doesn't corrupt the soul of a single member of Congress, it corrupts the institution--by weakening faith in it, and hence weakening the willingness of citizens to participate in their government. Why waste your time engaging politically when it is ultimately money that buys results, at least if you're not one of those few souls with vast sums of it?

"But maybe," the apologist insists, "the problem is in what Americans believe. Maybe we should work hard to convince Americans that they're wrong. It's understandable that they believe money is corrupting Washington. But it isn't. The money is benign. It supports the positions members have already taken. It is simply how those positions find voice and support. It is just the American way."

Here a second and completely damning response walks onto the field: if money really doesn't affect results in Washington, then what could possibly explain the fundamental policy failures--relative to every comparable democracy across the world, whether liberal or conservative--of our government over the past decades? The choice (made by Democrats and Republicans alike) to leave unchecked a huge and crucially vulnerable segment of our economy, which threw the economy over a cliff when it tanked (as independent analysts again and again predicted it would). Or the choice to leave unchecked the spread of greenhouse gases. Or to leave unregulated the exploding use of antibiotics in our food supply--producing deadly strains of E. coli. Or the inability of the twenty years of "small government" Republican presidents in the past twenty-nine to reduce the size of government at all. Or... you fill in the blank. From the perspective of what the People want, or even the perspective of what the political parties say they want, the Fundraising Congress is misfiring in every dimension. That is either because Congress is filled with idiots or because Congress has a dependency on something other than principle or public policy sense. In my view, Congress is not filled with idiots.

The point is simple, if extraordinarily difficult for those of us proud of our traditions to accept: this democracy no longer works. Its central player has been captured. Corrupted. Controlled by an economy of influence disconnected from the democracy. Congress has developed a dependency foreign to the framers' design. Corporate campaign spending, now liberated by the Supreme Court, will only make that dependency worse. "A dependence" not, as the Federalist Papers celebrated it, "on the People" but a dependency upon interests that have conspired to produce a world in which policy gets sold.

No one, Republican or Democratic, who doesn't currently depend upon this system should accept it. No president, Republican or Democratic, who doesn't change this system could possibly hope for any substantive reform. For small-government Republicans, the existing system will always block progress. There will be no end to extensive and complicated taxation and regulation until this system changes (for the struggle over endless and complicated taxation and regulation is just a revenue opportunity for the Fundraising Congress). For reform-focused Democrats, the existing system will always block progress. There will be no change in fundamental aspects of the existing economy, however inefficient, from healthcare to energy to food production, until this political economy is changed (for the reward from the status quo to stop reform is always irresistible to the Fundraising Congress). In a single line: there will be no change until we change Congress.

That Congress is the core of the problem with American democracy today is a point increasingly agreed upon by a wide range of the commentators. But almost universally, these commentators obscure the source of the problem.

Some see our troubles as tied to the arcane rules of the institution, particularly the Senate. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, for example, has tied the failings of Congress to the filibuster and argues that the first step of fundamental reform has got to be to fix that. Tom Geoghegan made a related argument in these pages in August, and the argument appears again in this issue. (Of course, these pages were less eager to abolish the filibuster when the idea was floated by the Republicans in 2005, but put that aside.)

These arguments, however, miss a basic point. Filibuster rules simply set the price that interests must pay to dislodge reform. If the rules were different, the price would no doubt be higher. But a higher price wouldn't change the economy of influence. Indeed, as political scientists have long puzzled, special interests underinvest in Washington relative to the potential return. These interests could just as well afford to assure that fifty-one senators block reform as forty.

Others see the problem as tied to lobbyists--as if removing lobbyists from the mix of legislating (as if that constitutionally could be done) would be reform enough to assure that legislation was not corrupted.

But the problem in Washington is not lobbying. The problem is the role that lobbyists have come to play. As John Edwards used to say (when we used to quote what Edwards said), there's all the difference in the world between a lawyer making an argument to a jury and a lawyer handing out $100 bills to the jurors. That line is lost on the profession today. The profession would earn enormous credibility if it worked to restore it.

Finally, some believe the problem of Congress is tied to excessive partisanship. Members from an earlier era routinely point to the loss of a certain civility and common purpose. The game as played by both parties seems more about the parties than about the common good.

But it is this part of the current crisis that the dark soul in me admires most. There is a brilliance to how the current fraud is sustained. Everyone inside this game recognizes that if the public saw too clearly that the driving force in Washington is campaign cash, the public might actually do something to change that. So every issue gets reframed as if it were really a question touching some deep (or not so deep) ideological question. Drug companies fund members, for example, to stop reforms that might actually test whether "me too" drugs are worth the money they cost. But the reforms get stopped by being framed as debates about "death panels" or "denying doctor choice" rather than the simple argument of cost-effectiveness that motivates the original reform. A very effective campaign succeeds in obscuring the source of conflict over major issues of reform with the pretense that it is ideology rather than campaign cash that divides us.

Each of these causes is a symptom of a more fundamental disease. That disease is improper dependency. Remove the dependency, and these symptoms become--if not perfectly then at least much more--benign.

As someone who has known Obama vaguely for almost twenty years--he was my colleague at the University of Chicago, and I supported and contributed to every one of his campaigns--I would have bet my career that he understood this. That's what he told us again and again in his campaign, not as colorfully as Edwards, but ultimately more convincingly. That's what distinguished him from Hillary Clinton. That's what Clinton, defender of the lobbyists, didn't get. It was "fundamentally chang[ing] the way Washington works" that was the essential change that would make change believable.

So if you had told me in 2008 that Obama expected to come to power and radically remake the American economy--as his plans to enact healthcare and a response to global warming alone obviously would--without first radically changing this corrupted machinery of government, I would not have believed it. Who could believe such a change possible, given the economy of influence that defines Washington now?

Yet a year into this administration, it is impossible to believe this kind of change is anywhere on the administration's radar, at least anymore. The need to reform Congress has left Obama's rhetoric. The race to dicker with Congress in the same way Congress always deals is now the plan. Symbolic limits on lobbyists within the administration and calls for new disclosure limits for Congress are the sole tickets of "reform." (Even its revolving-door policy left a Mack truck-wide gap at its core: members of the administration can't leave the government and lobby for the industries they regulated during the term of the administration. But the day after Obama leaves office? All bets are off.) Save a vague promise in his State of the Union about overturning the Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (as if that were reform enough), there is nothing in the current framework of the White House's plans that is anything more than the strategy of a kinder and gentler, albeit certainly more articulate, George W. Bush: buying reform at whatever price the Fundraising Congress demands. No doubt Obama will try to buy more reform than Bush did. But the terms will continue to be set by a Congress driven by a dependency that betrays democracy, and at a price that is not clear we can even afford.

Healthcare reform is a perfect example. The bill the Fundraising Congress has produced is miles from the reform that Obama promised ("Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange...including a public option," July 19, 2009). Like the stimulus package, like the bank bailouts, it is larded with gifts to the most powerful fundraising interests--including a promise to drug companies to pay retail prices for wholesale purchases and a promise to the insurance companies to leave their effectively collusive (since exempt from anti-trust limitations) and extraordinarily inefficient system of insurance intact--and provides (relative to the promises) little to the supposed intended beneficiaries of the law: the uninsured. In this, it is the perfect complement to the only significant social legislation enacted by Bush, the prescription drug benefit: a small benefit to those who can't afford drugs, a big gift to those who make drugs and an astonishingly expensive price tag for the nation.

So how did Obama get to this sorry bill? The first step, we are told, was to sit down with representatives from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries to work out a deal. But why, the student of Obama's campaign might ask, were they the entities with whom to strike a deal? How many of the 69,498,516 votes received by Obama did they actually cast? "We have to change our politics," Obama said. Where is the change in this?

"People...watch," Obama told us in the campaign, "as every year, candidates offer up detailed healthcare plans with great fanfare and promise, only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance industry lobbying once the campaign is over."

"This cannot," he said, "be one of those years."

It has been one of those years. And it will continue to be so long as presidents continue to give a free pass to the underlying corruption of our democracy: Congress.

There was a way Obama might have had this differently. It would have been risky, some might say audacious. And it would have required an imagination far beyond the conventional politics that now controls his administration.

No doubt, 2009 was going to be an extraordinarily difficult year. Our nation was a cancer patient hit by a bus on her way to begin chemotherapy. The first stages of reform thus had to be trauma care, at least to stabilize the patient until more fundamental treatment could begin.

But even then, there was an obvious way that Obama could have reserved the recognition of the need for this more fundamental reform by setting up the expectations of the nation forcefully and clearly. Building on the rhetoric at the core of his campaign, on January 20, 2009, Obama could have said:

America has spoken. It has demanded a fundamental change in how Washington works, and in the government America delivers. I commit to America to work with Congress to produce that change. But if we fail, if Congress blocks the change that America has demanded--or more precisely, if Congress allows the special interests that control it to block the change that America has demanded--then it will be time to remake Congress. Not by throwing out the Democrats, or by throwing out the Republicans. But by throwing out both, to the extent that both continue to want to work in the old way. If this Congress fails to deliver change, then we will change Congress.

Had he framed his administration in these terms, then when what has happened happened, Obama would be holding the means to bring about the obvious and critical transformation that our government requires: an end to the Fundraising Congress. The failure to deliver on the promises of the campaign would not be the failure of Obama to woo Republicans (the unwooable Victorians of our age). The failure would have been what America was already primed to believe: a failure of this corrupted institution to do its job. Once that failure was marked with a frame that Obama set, he would have been in the position to begin the extraordinarily difficult campaign to effect the real change that Congress needs.

I am not saying this would have been easy. It wouldn't have. It would have been the most important constitutional struggle since the New Deal or the Civil War. It would have involved a fundamental remaking of the way Congress works. No one should minimize how hard that would have been. But if there was a president who could have done this, it was, in my view, Obama. No politician in almost a century has had the demonstrated capacity to inspire the imagination of a nation. He had us, all of us, and could have kept us had he kept the focus high.

Nor can one exaggerate the need for precisely this reform. We can't just putter along anymore. Our government is, as Paul Krugman put it, "ominously dysfunctional" just at a time when the world desperately needs at least competence. Global warming, pandemic disease, a crashing world economy: these are not problems we can leave to a litter of distracted souls. We are at one of those rare but critical moments when a nation must remake itself, to restore its government to its high ideals and to the potential of its people. Think of the brilliance of almost any bit of the private sector--from Hollywood, to Silicon Valley, to MIT, to the arts in New York or Nashville--and imagine a government that reflected just a fraction of that excellence. We cannot afford any less anymore.

What would the reform the Congress needs be? At its core, a change that restores institutional integrity. A change that rekindles a reason for America to believe in the central institution of its democracy by removing the dependency that now defines the Fundraising Congress. Two changes would make that removal complete. Achieving just one would have made Obama the most important president in a hundred years.

That one--and first--would be to enact an idea proposed by a Republican (Teddy Roosevelt) a century ago: citizen-funded elections. America won't believe in Congress, and Congress won't deliver on reform, whether from the right or the left, until Congress is no longer dependent upon conservative-with-a-small-c interests--meaning those in the hire of the status quo, keen to protect the status quo against change. So long as the norms support a system in which members sell out for the purpose of raising funds to get re-elected, citizens will continue to believe that money buys results in Congress. So long as citizens believe that, it will.

Citizen-funded elections could come in a number of forms. The most likely is the current bill sponsored in the House by Democrat John Larson and Republican Walter Jones, in the Senate by Democrats Dick Durbin and Arlen Specter. That bill is a hybrid between traditional public funding and small-dollar donations. Under this Fair Elections Now Act (which, by the way, is just about the dumbest moniker for the statute possible, at least if the sponsors hope to avoid Supreme Court invalidation), candidates could opt in to a system that would give them, after clearing certain hurdles, substantial resources to run a campaign. Candidates would also be free to raise as much money as they want in contributions maxed at $100 per citizen.

The only certain effect of this first change would be to make it difficult to believe that money buys any results in Congress. A second change would make that belief impossible: banning any member of Congress from working in any lobbying or consulting capacity in Washington for seven years after his or her term. Part of the economy of influence that corrupts our government today is that Capitol Hill has become, as Representative Jim Cooper put it, a "farm league for K Street." But K Street will lose interest after seven years, and fewer in Congress would think of their career the way my law students think about life after law school--six to eight years making around $180,000, and then doubling or tripling that as a partner, where "partnership" for members of Congress means a comfortable position on K Street.

Before the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC, I thought these changes alone would be enough at least to get reform started. But the clear signal of the Roberts Court is that any reform designed to muck about with whatever wealth wants is constitutionally suspect. And while it would take an enormous leap to rewrite constitutional law to make the Fair Elections Now Act unconstitutional, Citizens United demonstrates that the Court is in a jumping mood. And more ominously, the market for influence that that decision will produce may well overwhelm any positive effect that Fair Elections produces.

This fact has led some, including now me, to believe that reform needs people who can walk and chew gum at the same time. Without doubt, we need to push the Fair Elections Now Act. But we also need to begin the process to change the Constitution to assure that reform can survive the Roberts Court. That constitutional change should focus on the core underlying problem: institutional independence. The economy of influence that grips Washington has destroyed Congress's independence. Congress needs the power to restore it, by both funding elections to secure independence and protecting the context within which elections occur so that the public sees that integrity.

No amendment would come from this Congress, of course. But the framers left open a path to amendment that doesn't require the approval of Congress--a convention, which must be convened if two-thirds of the states apply for it. Interestingly (politically) those applications need not agree on the purpose of the convention. Some might see the overturning of Citizens United. Others might want a balanced budget amendment. The only requirement is that two-thirds apply, and then begins the drama of an unscripted national convention to debate questions of fundamental law.

Many fear a convention, worrying that our democracy can't process constitutional innovation well. I don't share that fear, but in any case, any proposed amendment still needs thirty-eight states to ratify it. There are easily twelve solid blue states in America and twelve solid red states. No one should fear that change would be too easy.

No doubt constitutional amendments are politically impossible--just as wresting a republic from the grip of a monarchy, or abolishing slavery or segregation, or electing Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama was "politically impossible." But conventional minds are always wrong about pivot moments in a nation's history. Obama promised this was such a moment. The past year may prove that he let it slip from his hand.

For this, democracy pivots. It will either spin to restore integrity or it will spin further out of control. Whether it will is no longer a choice. Our only choice is how.

Imagine an alcoholic. He may be losing his family, his job and his liver. These are all serious problems. Indeed, they are among the worst problems anyone could face. But what we all understand about the dependency of alcoholism is that however awful these problems, the alcoholic cannot begin to solve them until he solves his first problem--alcoholism.

So too is it with our democracy. Whether on the left or the right, there is an endless list of critical problems that each side believes important. The Reagan right wants less government and a simpler tax system. The progressive left wants better healthcare and a stop to global warming. Each side views these issues as critical, either to the nation (the right) or to the globe (the left). But what both sides must come to see is that the reform of neither is possible until we solve our first problem first--the dependency of the Fundraising Congress.

This dependency will perpetually block reform of any kind, since reform is always a change in the status quo, and it is defense of the status quo that the current corruption has perfected. For again, as Obama said:

If we're not willing to take up that fight, then real change--change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans--will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.

"Defenders of the status quo"--now including the souls that hijacked the movement Obama helped inspire.

Editors' Note: We encourage readers moved by this essay to sign the Change Congress petition, a drive to enact solutions proposed in this article. Click here to sign. A video commentary by Professor Lessig can be viewed here.

How Shopping Carts May Be Our Greatest Weapon in the Health Care Fight

2010-02-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

By Robyn O'Brien, AlterNet
Posted on February 8, 2010, Printed on February 10, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145582/

"The less we spend on food, the more we spend on health care," said Michael Pollan on Oprah.

Today, Americans spend almost 20 cents of every dollar managing disease -- diabetes, allergies, asthma, cancer, obesity -- and only 10 cents of every dollar on food.

The jury is still out on what exactly may be causing all of these epidemics, but genetics don't change that quickly, the environment does. And increasing evidence points to the role that diet is playing in the onset of disease.

In a perfect world, we'd all be growing our own organic vegetable garden, but most of us don't yet live in that world. With picky eaters, limited time and a limited budget, we are trying to do the best we can with what we've got and are frustrated by the price discrepancy between conventional food and "organic" food at the grocery store.

But have you ever wondered why organic food costs more?

Organic food costs more than its conventional counterparts because our taxpayer dollars are not used to support organic farms to the same extent that our dollars are used to support conventional farms. Under our current system, it is more profitable for farmers to grow crops laced with chemicals than organic ones because they will receive larger government handouts from the USDA Farm Subsidy program, more marketing assistance and stronger crop insurance programs.

If farmers do choose to grow organic crops, it costs them more because not only do they not receive the same level of financial handouts from the government, but they are also charged a fee to prove that their crops are safe and then on top of that, they are then charged a fee to label their crops as "organic." As a result, organic farmers have a higher cost structure -- with added fees and expenditures required to bring their products to market -- while our taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize the crops with the chemicals.

Wouldn't it make more sense to use our taxpayer dollars to subsidize the crops without chemicals given the increasing evidence pointing to the impact that these environmental insults are having on our health? What if our most powerful weapon in the war on health care is a farm subsidy?

Health care reform could begin at the USDA, with an equal allocation of our taxpayer dollars between organic and conventional farming. The USDA could continue health care reform by providing equivalent marketing assistance and crop insurance programs for organic crops and by eliminating the organic certification fee farmers are required to pay in order to label their crops as "USDA Organic."

If we invite the US Department of Agriculture to be part of health care reform, the USDA could level the economic playing field for the farmers, enabling more farms to grow crops free of chemicals, synthetic and genetically engineered ingredients which would, in turn, increase the supply of these crops in the marketplace -- which, as any good economist knows, would drive down costs. Organic food would be more affordable to more of us.

Safe food is a social justice issue that our taxpayer dollars could be used to support. Perhaps it's time to invite the USDA into the health care debate and address the current system under which our taxpayer dollars are being used to externalize the costs of these chemicals onto the health of our families. With the USDA at the table, health care reform could begin on the farm allowing the most powerful weapon in the health care debate to be a grocery cart.

Robyn O'Brien is founder of AllergyKids Foundation and author of the book, The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It.

Mycelium Mushrooms Provide Detoxification for the Earth

2010-02-10T13:09:00.001-08:00

http://www.naturalnews.com/028132_detoxification_mycelium.html

February 10 2010

Mycelium Mushrooms Provide Detoxification for the Earth
by Kim Evans, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) Much of the land, air and water around the world have been contaminated by industrial waste and pollution. Many people are affected by the filth as it`s unfortunate but true that what`s in the air and water around our homes regularly ends up inside of our bodies. The problems are serious, but fortunately, nature has provided us with an environmental solution in an unlikely package: mushrooms. Mycelium from mushrooms has the unique ability to breakdown and detoxify a great deal of toxic industrial waste and pollution.

Mycelium is actually the fruit of a mushroom. In forests, the mycelia breakdown and recycle nitrogen, carbon and plant and animal debris; they turn the forests` waste products into rich soil.

However, Paul Stemets, a longtime mushroom researcher, discovered that mushroom mycelium also has the unique ability to break down hydrocarbons - and hydrocarbons are at the base of many industrial pollutants. Everything from pesticides to dioxins have a hydrocarbon base.

According to Stemets, mycelium can break down and detoxify biological warfare agents and heavy metals, including lead and mercury. In addition, he`s found that mycelium can remove industrial toxins from the soil, including pesticides, chlorine, dioxin, and PCBs. Since many of these poisons are showing up in the umbilical cord blood of infants, it`s about time we got serious about getting them out of the environment. Using mushroom mycelium is an environmentally friendly way to do it, and it`s far less expensive than conventional methods of environmental cleanup.

Conventional methods of removing industrial contamination include treating the waste with chemicals or capturing the waste and burning it. Of course, the burning of industrial waste just releases those chemicals right back into the air we all breathe. And this time, it contains new and unknown chemical combinations - ones that might be more dangerous than the original ones.

To cleanse the soil of contaminants, mycelium absorbs the compounds of the soil and water around it. It acts as a filter to remove any usable materials, and then it releases enzymes to break down any remaining contaminants. As an example of its effectiveness: when soil contaminated with diesel fuel is inoculated with mycelia from oyster mushrooms, it was found to lose its toxicity in just 8 weeks.

Many plants benefit from a relationship with mycelium, and mycelium makes up about 10 percent of many healthy soils. Trees often become more drought and disease resistant with mycelium. Mycelium can also kill many agricultural pests; it even kills problems including Staphylococcus sp. and E. coli.

Stemets tells us that mycelium can also be used to cleanse groundwater of contaminants and pollutants. Yet, as with many natural healing techniques, what we really need are more people using them.

The Heirs of I. G. Farben

2010-02-08T06:18:00.001-08:00

This only proves that there is a cabal of evil elites who continue to support evil war companies long after wars. I.G. Farben was a large petrochemical, pharmaceutical company that manufactured Zyklon B, the gas that was used to kill the inmates of Nazi concentration camps. A family member died was gassed to death in one of those camps so this makes me suffer. I.G. Farben should have been broken into a billion pieces and all their assets plus the assets of the 'shareholders' (including the evil Warburg family of London, Germany and New York) given to the families they helped kill!!!

So HOW do I fight back? Well Bayer is part of this complex of genocidal evil so I won't use their medicine. I was once facing death and the doctor tried to get me to take some of their medicine and I told the doctor I'd rather die than take it. I needed some aspirin lately and all the stores had was Bayer aspirin. I told them, "I'd rather be dragged down the streets and torn into pieces then eaten by wild dogs than take this!" I won't drink Coca Cola, either! They're responsible for 2,200 union organizers being killed in Columbia. I also won't eat United Fruit products because of their history of making slaves out of workers plus killing the union organizers. And so it goes...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862657-1,00.html

Monday, Jul. 22, 1957

BUSINESS ABROAD: The Heirs of I. G. Farben

L. G. Farben was the largest corporation in Germany and the largest chemical corporation in the world. This organization planned and schemed as a tool of the Nazi regime. The Allied Control Council has agreed that the economic power of cartels, syndicates, trusts and combines will be eliminated. We are committed and determined to seek out and destroy the sources of Germany's once powerful aggressive industrial might.

Thus in 1945 did a Senate Military Affairs subcommittee hear Major General John H. Hilldring, the War Department's chief of U.S. military government and decartelization in Germany, pledge to break up the $2.8 billion Farben chemical trust. Farben had held an interest—often a controlling interest—in 379 German companies and 400 others. The Allies enthusiastically enforced this policy of dismemberment. They imprisoned 13 of Farben's top 23 executives as war criminals, stripped Farben of $1 billion worth of its assets and of its 30,000 patents. The Russians and Poles swallowed the three-fifths of Farben that lay in eastern Germany, including its biggest single chemical works and its largest synthetic-rubber plant. Farben plants in the Western occupation zones were divided into 44 separate companies.

That was the end of Farben as such. But it was the beginning of an amazing recovery by the free-enterprising successors to the cartel, which has resulted in bigger sales than their prewar parent ever had. In the postwar German boom, Farben's vigorous successor companies have won back far more of their immense prewar business and prestige than the most optimistic German had hoped for. Sales of the three biggest companies last year topped $1.09 billion, just over Farben's prewar total; and they are rising at the rate of 12% a year (but are still well behind Du Font's $1.89 billion). Even so, the German chemical industry has grown so fast that the trio accounts for but one-third of all West German chemical sales. Yet it holds 7% of the capital invested in West German companies, employs 2% of the country's industrial work force.

From Ashes to Atoms. Fastest growing of the top three Farben heirs is Farbwerke Hoechst near Frankfurt, whose moving force is energetic Board Chairman Karl Winnacker, 53, a wartime Farben plant manager. Hoechst's sales—antibiotics, synthetic fibers, cellophane and oxygen—rocketed 17% last year to $355 million. Now the company is taking German industry's first steps toward harnessing the atom. It operates a nuclear research laboratory outside Frankfurt and is building a heavy-water plant (annual capacity: six tons) that will be among Europe's biggest when completed this year. Last week, with Atomic Energy Commission approval. North American Aviation Inc. sent to Hoechst the final parts of a 50-kw. U.S. nuclear research reactor that uses heavy water. Hoechst will donate the reactor to Frankfurt University, which will conduct nuclear experiments for Hoechst and other German companies.

A month ago the biggest of Farben's successors, Farbenfabriken Bayer of Le-verkusen. announced one of its most am bitious projects. With Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.'s German subsidiary, Bayer will build a $60 million plant near Cologne to crack 2,100,000 bbl. of oil a year into basic chemicals for plastics and synthetic fabrics. This will vastly expand Bayer's production of 13,000 different chemicals, dyes, drugs, resins and photographic products (Agfa), which last year rang up $380 million in sales.

Into the World Market. Bossed by Dr. Ulrich Haberland, 56, who ran two Bayer plants during the war and was picked by the British at war's end to direct the combine of Farben plants that now make up Bayer, the company is rapidly moving into foreign markets. Burgeoning Bayer has recently opened plants in Argentina, Brazil and Chile; it is building another in Mexico and, together with Farbwerke Hoechst, will add still another in Pakistan. In the U.S. it owns a 50-50 interest, with Monsanto Chemical Co., in West Virginia's Mobay Chemical Co. (polyurethane plastics), and a 50% interest with Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical Co. in Manhattan's Chemagro Corp. (insecticides).

Close behind Bayer among the Farben heirs is Badische Anilin-und Soda-Fabrik (B.A.S.F.) of Ludwigshafen, with sales of $357 million from chemicals, plastics, dyes, fertilizers, insecticides. Worst damaged of the big three, B.A.S.F. saw its Rhineside plant at Ludwigshafen 45% bombed out, started up again in 1945 with only 800 workers. Today the smoky, sprawling plant is Western Europe's biggest chemical unit with 36,600 workers. B.A.S.F. also employs 11,000 at its Auguste-Victoria coal mine in the Ruhr. Masterminding B.A.S.F.'s comeback is its wartime head, Chairman Carl Wurster, 56, who was acquitted at Nurnberg on charges of plundering occupied countries and employing slave labor.

Pressure v. Pressure. How did the Farben successors soar so high so fast? Answered a West German industrialist: "In physics we have the law that pressure brings forth counterpressure. The Allies exerted great pressure on Germany. In return, we exerted great counterpressure. And to get our minds off the dark future, we also worked like hell."

The splinter companies of the war-racked Farben trust started working from the moment the shooting stopped. Bayer got the first postwar production permit in the British occupation zone, and the other Farben companies rushed to follow. The market was enormous, since Germany had no money to import such vitally needed products as drugs, fertilizers and dyes. To replace the plants and patents lost to the Allies, the companies plowed back 20% of their sales into buildings and research. B.A.S.F., for example, has applied for 3,900 new chemical patents since the war, now bases only 200 of its thousands of chemical products on pre-1945 patents.

While the Farben heirs built up, the Allies broke down in bickering over how to take Farben apart. U.S. decartelizers demanded a complete breakup into many splinter companies; the British wanted sizable firms. So did the French, who also desired to absorb some rich Farben plants located near France. German negotiators, holding fast to their plan for big successor companies, utilized the dispute among the victors to drag out the talks and wait for the political climate to change. By 1950 the Western Allies had decided that the U.S.S.R. was really the enemy, and that it would be good economics and good politics to encourage a strong West German chemical industry. They accepted the German plan almost intact, agreed to split Farben into only three big companies and nine lesser ones. But by 1954 the three giants had absorbed most of the nine smaller units, leaving only the big three and two lesser companies.

New Problems. Despite their quick comeback, the companies are still licking some battle wounds. As the world leader in chemical sales, Germany in 1938 held 24% of the world chemical trade v. 15% for the U.S.; today West Germany has 14%, the U.S. 23%. Among the reasons: Farben successors are cut off from many of their eastern sources of supply, thus must pay up to three times as much as U.S. competitors for some raw materials. And their productivity is below the U.S. level because old, war-weary equipment is still being replaced.

The fact that the companies neatly complement each other has stirred up some fears in the West that they might recombine. From time to time in the past, the managers of the companies have heartily condemned the deconcentration of Farben as being uneconomical and inefficient. But now they declare that there is no intent to re-form the competition-stifling Farben trust. A legal reason is that such a movement would crash head-on with West Germany's new anticartel law (TIME, July 15). It would also downgrade the men who have built up rank in the separate companies. Even more important, Farben's prosperous heirs are doing so well that the three fast-moving, flexible companies can compete far better in world markets than one unwieldy colossus.

The Righteous Small House: Challenging House Size and the Irresponsible American Dream

2010-02-07T16:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/the-righteous-small-house-challenging-house-size-and-the-irresponsible-american-dream

An architect asks, at what point does size cancel out sustainability?
by Jason McLennan
Jan 29, 2010

Home sizes have ballooned over the last few decades—as have their ecological footprints.

A house must be built on solid foundations if it is to last. The same principle applies to man, otherwise he too will sink back into the soft ground and become swallowed up by the world of illusion. —Sai BaBa

I recently toured a residential subdivision whose grandiose homes were aggressively promoted as green. The developer and builder used a rating system to quantify the extent to which they had built sustainability into each structure. I was drawn to the project because of its claims of responsibility; I was repelled by it when I observed its inherent hypocrisy.

How, under any circumstances, can a 6,000-square-foot single family home be considered green? Something is terribly wrong with a system that ranks such a dwelling high on the green scale when it is intended to house only two to five people. Such oversized homes—with their three-car garages, bonus rooms, great rooms, etc.—are nothing less than mini-mansions (“starter castles,” as I call them) and have no business being associated with green building, even when they incorporate green features.

In my opinion, the existence of oxymoronic “green mansions” is symptomatic of a larger set of problems. Yes, the design and building communities need to establish universal guidelines to define truly green standards, and communicate the ecological notion that “less is more.” But perhaps more importantly, American society must realign its values when it comes to house size. With builders over-building, buyers being taught to embrace excess, lenders focusing more on size than value,
each link in the chain weakens the one that follows. It is incumbent upon us as leaders in the green movement to educate consumers on how and why to seek saner, greener relationships with their homes.

This article explores two fundamental topics regarding the intersection between lifestyle and sustainability:

How big can a home get before it is simply too big to be called green, regardless of its design and materials?

From a sustainability standpoint, what size house should we seek? What guidelines should we follow when selecting a home?

Should developers take responsibility for limiting the size of homes they build?

At What Point Does Size Cancel Out Sustainability?

Green homes require more than the token placement of solar panels and the use of recycled-content materials. True sustainability must go beyond tangible design and construction and encompass a philosophical commitment to green living.

A larger structure can meet multiple green standards; it can even impose a smaller environmental footprint than smaller homes. But it is simply too easy to rationalize outsized homes and justify their excess by wrapping them in a loud green ribbon.

The industry must follow consistent guidelines and increase public awareness of this growing problem—that is also related to the housing and financial crisis the country is currently in. When all segments of the market work together, green building will evolve from a guilt-removing fashion to a far-reaching instrument of change.

Putting Things in Perspective

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average size of a new single-family American residence in 1950 was 983 square feet. Today, it is nearly 2500 square feet. As home sizes ballooned over that time, family size shrank. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that in 1950, an average American family consisted of 3.8 people; today’s average family contains 2.6 people.

These figures prove how inefficiently we use our resources when we build homes with such drastically disproportionate size-to-occupant ratios. Instead, as we go forward, we must adhere to a stricter code of square-footage-per-person, particularly when we speak of green projects.

Does Size Really Matter?

Photo by Ann Douglas

Plenty of people live in small houses and live what they like to think is an ideal eco-existence. But house size alone does not always relate to responsible resource use. When a childless couple or a one-child family lives in a relatively “small” house but their square-footage-per-person rates are high, they are not living as green as they might think. I am concerned less with total house size and more with relative resource use and quality green design.

I speak to this subject from personal experience as co-head of a blended family with four kids. As our family has grown, my wife and I have lived in homes of varying shapes and sizes—in apartments and single-family homes set in urban centers and rural areas. I’ve seen what does and doesn’t work for family residences, and I’ve learned that a well-designed home or apartment can be small and functional at the same time.

Through her writing, Sarah Susanka has helped promote the desirability of living Not So Big. She has made the small house cool again, while calling into question what might be missing in the lives of those who settle into such massive physical spaces. Sarah’s work celebrates the idea of restraint, which is sorely lacking in our culture. When did our grandparents’ notion of “plenty” become “not enough” to 21st-century homeowners, her readers ask? When did the three-car garage, which more often serves as storage for unneeded junk than for vehicles, become a standard feature? When did we decide that we require separate rooms for living, reading, eating, and recreation?

The Money Pit
A "Living" Built Environment

What if buildings and neigh- borhoods produced their own energy and treated their own water?

The market-driven interest in size for the sake of size creates a vicious financial and resource-wasting cycle. Buyers spend more on their homes, more to heat and cool them, more to clean them, and more to fill them with possessions. Worse yet, most oversized homes are built by cookie-cutter developers who meet the market demand for square footage by compromising on design and material quality. It is amazing how many large ‘custom’ homes are conceived and built without architects. The results speak for themselves with subdivision after subdivision of poorly designed boxes with terrible site integration, badly designed interior spaces, and awkward floor plans. People spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on flimsy dumb boxes with tacked-on columns, stainless steel-fronted appliances, and badly-labeled ‘great rooms’ and think somehow they are getting value. The “builder-plan” trend has dumbed down the building profession and resulted in a scarcity of true craftsmanship.

Instead, both sides of the industry (buyers and builders alike) should focus on quality rather than quantity, reinvesting in healthier materials, more durable construction, and alternative energy sources in tandem with quality design led by architects and designers. A home should be judged by the quality of its details and craftsmanship rather than the size of its shadow.

The Green Dirt Farmstead makes efficient use of space and consumes zero net energy.

Changing the Perception of Value

There are so many things wrong with the model of building massive houses. Consumers usually have a finite amount of money with which to build a home, but societal rules—established, I believe, by developers, builders, and lenders in conjunction with societal mores that view “more is better”—dictate that value relates to square footage. The larger the home, the greater the cost … so if a larger home costs the same as a smaller home, the former is supposedly a better deal. But it’s not, not by a long shot. In order to expand home size and keep costs down, builders cut corners and consumers lose. I’ve seen many residents who move into giant new houses and can’t figure out why they don’t feel comfortable inside—and they don’t understand that it’s the poorly designed spaces. Feng Shui does in fact matter. Buyers’ joy fades quickly and the reality of living in large, charmless boxes sets in.

A well-built house should far outlive its first owners. And all who dwell there through the years should be allowed to enjoy the comfort that comes with responsibility.

Unfortunately, these misaligned values are rife throughout the system. When buyers seek financing for a given property, lenders look for ‘comps’ in order to establish monetary value. Homes are valued based on a narrow range of shallow attributes, location, and size. But the mortgage lending community doesn’t factor in design quality or sustainability when it assesses a home; it measures square footage primarily. People seeking to do something durable and innovative see their efforts valued less than if they simply built what everyone else was building—surely a perverse incentive if there ever was one. Not surprisingly, smaller homes are particularly undervalued and even though it is more likely that someone with lower energy bills and operating costs can afford to pay their mortgages—they are penalized.

The Green Square Foot Metric
If the industry embraced a national square-footage-per-resident standard, then designers, builders, buyers, and lenders could quantify a home’s green quotient.

Such a system would provide a concrete method with which to determine whether a house is green or simply greenwashed. Smaller, well-built, and well-designed houses could become a cornerstone of a new, more responsible lending institution that moved us back from the precipice of the crashing housing market.

First things first: I propose that the design/build community set a maximum house size. Homes exceeding a certain size just wouldn’t be built or purchased.

Secondly, I recommend that the size-per-person should range from 200 to 800 square feet, depending on the depth of green design for the first three people in a household. When more than three people reside in a house, an additional 400 square-feet-per-person could be used.

This system mandates that no house exceed 4400 square feet—ever. Such a structure is still huge; but using the chart as a guide, it must provide shelter for eight or more people in order to meet sustainability guidelines.

As family size grows, home size does not necessarily have to increase to accommodate human comfort. (For example, you don’t add another kitchen or entryway every time a child is born, you simply make them slightly bigger.) Siblings might share bedrooms, family members can share bathrooms, etc. Yes, a separate family room is appealing when multiple kids are involved, and an
enclosed garage helps keep the rain off the car. But the greenest solution is what people choose NOT to build.

The average American family house or condominium, which today is built for three people, should be no larger than 1600 square feet in order to be considered green. (This is more than 600 square feet larger than the house of the 1950s but approximately 900 square feet smaller than the average house today.) Houses need to shrink again. This would do a lot to avoid a future housing crisis.

If people have more money and are looking for a new place to live, the compelling message should not be to move into a larger home, but rather to invest in quality and design and to downsize or ‘rightsize’ based on your family size.

Working at home drastically reduces green house gas emissions as transportation impacts are avoided. Additional square footage can be justified if people are working at home a significant amount of time. In these cases, I would propose a maximum 200 square feet bonus allowance to accommodate telecommuting for each working adult.

The square-foot-per-person metric lessens as more people join a household. (Sharing is also green.) So house size shrinks from 600 square feet per person down to 450 square feet per person as an overall average.

As professionals leading the charge toward greener ways of living, we must challenge assumptions that hinder our progress.

Responsibility naturally breeds sustainability.

A farming model to sustain the world

2010-02-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/51338

ZSpace, Archived Jan 27 2010
A farming model to sustain the world
by Devinder Sharma

Ten years from now, in 2020, when we try to look back, Indian agriculture can be transformed into a healthy and vibrant system where farmer suicides have been relegated to history, where distress and despondency has been replaced by the lost pride in farming, where agriculture becomes sustainable in the long run, and does not add on to global warming.

As we enter 2010, the script for a futuristic agriculture, which brings back the smile on the face of farmers, without leaving any scar on the environment, is being rewritten.

What began as a small initiative some six years back in a non-descript village in Khamam district, has now spread to over 2 million acres in 21 districts of Andhra Pradesh. I remember when I first talked about the miracle brought about in village Pannukula in Andhra Pradesh, many thought I was simply trying to romanticise agriculture. How farming can be done without the use of chemical pesticides, I was repeatedly asked.

Pannukula dug out a lonely furrow, but eventually blazed a trail. In the next four years, more than 318,000 farmers in 21 out of the 23 districts of Andhra Pradesh have discarded the intensive chemical farming systems, and shifted to a more sustainable, economically viable and ecologically friendly agriculture. A silent revolution is in the offing. In Kharif 2009 (the monsoon season), some 1.4 million acres was covered with what is now known as Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA).

As I write this in the first week of January 2010, the area had expanded to 2 million acres of 21 districts. More than 0.6 million acres increase in a farming system that does not use chemical pesticides, and is also phasing out chemical fertiliser, that too in matter of few months, is a record of sorts. And all this has happened without any push from the government agencies and the private sector. I see no reason why this environmentally safe, and a farmer-friendly system of sustainable agriculture, cannot cover 200 million acres across the country in another ten years or so if the government gets serious.

60,000 acres increase in a farming system that does not use chemical pesticides, and is also phasing out chemical fertiliser, that too in matter of few months, is a record of sorts. Ten years from now, in 2020, when we try to look back, Indian agriculture can be transformed into a healthy and vibrant system where farmer suicides have been relegated to history, where distress and despondency has been replaced by the lost pride in farming, and where agriculture becomes sustainable in the long run and does not result in climate change.

What began as an experiment to evolve a farming system without the application of chemical pesticides is now also phasing out the use of chemical fertilisers. It uses a mixture of scientific proven technologies, indigenous knowledge and traditional wisdom. Farmers are replacing chemical fertilisers and pesticides with microbial formulations, intensive use of composting techniques, vermi-composting, and apply bio-fertilisers, and use bio-extracts for controlling pests.

Paddy crop has increased significantly under CMSA. It therefore brought in a complete shift from conventional agriculture and offered secure and stable livelihoods. The crop yields have remained the same, the pest attack has drastically reduced, and the soil is returning back to its natural fertility levels. As soil fertility improves over the years, crop yields have started going up still further. More importantly, farmer's expenditure on health problems emanating from pesticides application has also gone down by 40 per cent on an average.

There is more money now in the hands of the farmers. The cost of cultivation per acre has also come down by 33 per cent. Take the case of cotton, a CMSA farmer saves more than Rs 12,500 per hectare in a year on account of no application of pesticides alone. With his crop productivity remaining stable, cotton farmers have got a new lease of life. The environment too has become healthier and safe.

What began as an experiment to evolve a farming system without the application of chemical pesticides is now also phasing out the use of chemical fertilisers by relying on a mixture of scientific proven technologies, indigenous knowledge and traditional wisdom. Normally, 56 per cent of the cost of cotton cultivation is primarily on account of pesticides. And don't forget, elsewhere in the State and for that matter in the country, 70 per cent of the farmers who are committing suicide are engaged in cotton cultivation.

No farmer has committed suicide in the areas where non-pesticides management system of farming is being followed.

More money in the hands of farmers means less debt. I haven't seen any other village in the country in past three decades of my work in agriculture, which has been able to recover its entire mortgaged land from the money lenders in just three years of adopting non-pesticides management. This happened in village Ramachandrapuram in Khamam district where all 75 farmers have even paid back the outstanding rate of interest.

Studies in five districts show that out of the 467 families that had mortgaged their land, at least 386 have recovered it in two years time.

This is a roadmap for the future of Indian agriculture, and for that global agriculture. It not only provides a sustainable path, with a very low carbon footprint, and has tremendous potential to remove poverty and hunger. It has been conclusively demonstrated that household food security has improved with a 40 per cent drop in the purchase of food from the market. The crop yields have gone up, and farmers are now able to cultivate two crops in a year. This is the Zero Hunger model that I normally talk about which needs to be adopted under the proposed National Food Security Act.

Women and farmer Self Help Groups' play a critical role in CMSA. Savings have increased, and a federation of 850,675 self-help groups now involves 10 million women from the poor households. This federation now holds a corpus of US $ 1.5 billion providing a bundle of economic services. No wonder, sustainable agriculture without external inputs can revolutionise the rural landscape, where hunger and poverty becomes history.

A Progressive Tax: It's Not Socialism, It's Correctionism

2010-02-07T16:05:00.001-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/print/52484

February 4, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
A Progressive Tax: It's Not Socialism, It's Correctionism
by Paul Buchheit

People don't want to talk about taxes. Most of us are afraid that a tax increase will impact ALL of us. The media shies away from such a controversial topic. Certainly the rich don't want to talk about it. And even lower-income people seem to have this sense that they will be wealthy someday, and government shouldn't interfere with their plans.

So on we go with the cutbacks in train and bus service, and the loss of teachers, the cancellation of after-school programs in low-income areas, reductions in library hours and park services. Plus, of course, increases in state income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, gas taxes, cigarette taxes, utility costs, license fees, parking meter rates.

The public rarely hears about one of the major causes of this assault on the middle class.

From 1980 to 2006 the richest 1% of America TRIPLED their after-tax percentage of our nation's total income, while the bottom 90% have seen their share drop over 20%.

That's a TRILLION dollars a year, one-seventh of America's total income, that went to the richest 1% while 90% of us went backwards.

But, many people ask, don't the very rich pay most of the taxes? Just federal income tax. And they pay less than 23% of their incomes in federal income tax. If state and local taxes, social security tax, and excise taxes are included, the lowest-earning half of America pays 24% of their incomes in taxes.

But isn't taxing the rich a form of socialism? Since 1980, if the average working family had received compensation based on its relative contribution to America's prosperity, it would be making an average of $45,000 a year instead of $35,000. Through 30 years of deregulation and financial maneuvering, the richest 1% have taken $10,000 a year from every American family. That's socialism in reverse.

But doesn't "income mobility" explain and mitigate the apparent inequities? In his book, "Intellectuals and Society" (Basic Books, 2009), Thomas Sowell claims that statements about inequality are "confusing statistical categories with flesh-and-blood human beings."

Sowell relies heavily on a 2007 U.S. Treasury Department report about income mobility that states "Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996 – the top 1/100 of 1 percent – only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005." But he ignores the fact that nearly 9 out of 10 of those in the top 1% remained in the top quintile of earners over those ten years. They may have dropped out of the most elite 1% group, but they remained close. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

But that isn't even the main point. More significantly, our economy allows a tiny percentage of us to take an inordinate amount of money from society, at an increasing rate. Some people may have dropped out of this elite group, but those who have moved in are making even more! The result is a system in which one man (hedge fund manager John Paulson in 2007) can make more money than the total of the salaries of every police officer, firefighter, and public school teacher in Chicago, while another man stands hungry in the cold. And any attempt to fix the system is called socialism.

So what's the solution? Several states have implemented more progressive tax systems. And they have apparently not caused wealthy people to transfer their fortunes out-of-state. A 2008 study by Princeton University determined that "the 'half-millionaire tax,' at least in New Jersey, appears to be an effective and efficient revenue-generation mechanism, having little impact on migration patterns among half-millionaire households." [1] Similarly, little adverse effect of higher taxes was found in Maryland or Oregon. [2] A study by the California Budget Project revealed that the number of high-income households actually grew during periods of higher income tax rates for top earners. [3] Oregon recently passed Measures 66 and 67, which impose modest income tax increases on the wealthiest residents and raise the corporate minimum tax for the first time in 80 years.

President Obama is right to seek a progressive federal tax structure in which the very rich will return some of the money derived from years of deregulation and shrewd financial strategies. We need Congress and the media to support this way of thinking.
Paul Buchheit is a faculty member in the School for New Learning at DePaul University.

Note: All the facts cited herein are from the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

1. Tax Foundation. Summary of Latest Federal Individual Income Tax Data. July 18, 2008 .

2. Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, "Who Pays?" (January, 2003) ; see also Citizens for Tax Justice : Citizen's Guide to the Illinois State Tax System: What Every Concerned Illinoisan Should Know (Illinoisans who make less than $15,000 per year pay 13 percent of its income in state taxes. Middle class families pay 10 percent of their income in taxes. Wealthy Illinoisans, with an average income of $1.2 million pay only 6 percent of their income in state taxes.

3. U.S. Congressional Budget Office. "Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2005," December, 2007. . (Note: the corporate income tax, which derives from capital ownership, are not considered in this analysis; the responsibility for these taxes is subject to dispute; see William C. Randolph, "International Burdens of the Corporate Income Tax," Congressional Budget Office, August 2006 : "..domestic labor bears slightly more than 70 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax"; see also Andrew Chamberlain, "Who Really Pays the Corporate Income Tax?" The Tax Foundation, May 4, 2006 ; Bob Williams, "Who Really Pays the Corporate Income Tax?" Tax Policy Center, August 2008; Scott A. Hodge and Gerald Prante, "Personalizing the Corporate Income Tax," The Tax Foundation, October 25, 2007 .)

Tax the Corporations and the Rich or Take Draconian Cuts -- the Decision Is Ours

2010-02-07T14:44:00.001-08:00

By David Sirota, AlterNet
February 4, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145554/

Judging by Tim Tebow's much-hyped Super Bowl ad, "choose life" remains conservatives' favorite abortion shibboleth. But really, the phrase better captures the stakes in the Great Budget Wars of 2010.

Plagued by deficits, communities everywhere must now decide between tax reform and public spending cuts -- between economic life and death. And thanks to two Western bellwether states, we know what each choice means.

Choosing death means mimicking Colorado Springs -- a Republican red tattoo on Colorado's purple heart.

As a venue for political experiments, the sprawly GOP enclave is as pristine a conservative laboratory as you'll find in America. If the city has garnered contemporary notoriety at all, it has achieved infamy for domiciling right-wing groups like Focus on the Family and infecting the world with viruses like Douglas Bruce -- the father of draconian initiatives that seek to prohibit governments from raising levies.

When the Tea Party movement's anti-tax activists refer to the abstract concept of conservative purity, we can turn to a microcosm like The Springs (as we Coloradoans call it) for a good example of what such purity looks like in practice -- and the view isn't pretty.

Thanks to the city's rejection of tax increases -- and, thus, depleted municipal revenues -- The Denver Post reports that "more than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark; the city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops; water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead … recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools (and) museums will close for good; Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends; (and) the city won't pay for any street paving."

Meanwhile, even with the Colorado Springs Gazette uncovering tent ghettos of newly homeless residents, the city's social services are being reduced -- all as fat cats aim to punish what remains of a middle class. As just one example, rather than initiating a tax discussion, the CEO of The Springs' most lavish luxury hotel is pushing city leaders to cut public employee salaries to the $24,000-a-year level he pays his own workforce -- a level approaching Colorado's official poverty line for a family of four.

This is what Reaganites have always meant when they've talked of a "shining city on a hill." They envision a dystopia whose anti-tax fires incinerate social fabric faster than James Dobson can say "family values" -- a place like Colorado Springs that is starting to reek of economic death.

Choosing life, by contrast, means doing what Colorado's governor and state legislature are doing by temporarily suspending corporate tax exemptions and raising revenue for job-sustaining schools and infrastructure. Even more dramatically, it means doing what voters in Oregon did last week.

As deficits threatened their education and public health systems, Oregonians confronted two ballot initiatives -- one modestly raising taxes on annual income above $250,000, another hiking the state's $10 minimum corporate income tax.

Despite these measures exempting 97 percent of taxpayers, conservatives waged a vicious opposition campaign, trotting out billionaire Nike CEO Phil Knight as their celebrity spokesperson. But this time, the right's greed-is-good mantra failed. In a swing state that had killed every similar initiative since the 1930s, voters backed the tax increases -- and chose economic life.

No matter where we live, this same choice will soon face us all in some form. It is a choice embodied in President Obama's pragmatic initiative to end his predecessor's high-income tax breaks, a choice for which future local and federal elections will serve as proxies.

Inevitably, anti-tax zealots will attempt to obscure what this choice is about -- but the choice is now crystal clear.

Tax reform or draconian cuts, life or death -- the decision is ours.

Fury at Wall St. Banks Fuels Public Action for Move Your Money Campaign

2010-02-07T03:45:00.000-08:00

By Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet
February 5, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145541/

Since the burst of the financial bubble in 2008, and surely before, millions of Americans have watched as their life savings dwindled to fumes. Unemployment has held steady at 10 percent or above (among minority groups, it will likely hit the 20s this year) and one in five Americans went hungry last year. As the human recession has worsened, Congress has been slow to act to quell it, while they've rushed to the aid of too-big-to-fail banks.

A new campaign called Move Your Money aims to tackle the frustrations with the Wall Street banks, and the politicians they've bought off, head on. The campaign is based on a simple idea: Americans ought to move their money from the big banks -- that took billions in taxpayer money and continue to foist outrageous interest rates even as they cut lending -- to local financial institutions that actually are a part of their communities. Move the money back home.

In the first 48 hours of the campaign, which launched days before the New Year, over 100,000 people responded with inquiries on how to move their money and credit to the nation's 7,600 community banks and 8,000 credit unions.

Channeling anger for change

The action campaign isn't the first to base itself on widespread anger toward the largest banks in the country. In April last year, that anger was channeled into A New Way Forward (ANWF). The group organized protests across the country that sought to break up the "zombie" banks.

The worst of the bad guys, nearly everyone agrees, are the so-called Big Six: JP Morgan/Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Experts believe the first four alone hold at least 40 percent of our nation's deposits and half of all bank assets.

But despite ANWF's nationwide rallies -- which remained relatively small, though attended by voters of all political stripes -- breaking up the banks has never been on the legislative table. That may be one reason why Move Your Money has garnered so much excitement. It does not seek to force people on the Hill or in the White House, many of whom are indebted to banking interests, to act.

Instead, Move Your Money calls for direct action by regular people who are irate at the overly cautious pace of financial reform.

"Our money has been used to make the system worse -- what if we used it to make the system better?" wrote Arianna Huffington and Rob Johnson -- she of the Huffington Post, he of the Roosevelt Institute -- in their campaign introduction. They framed Move Your Money as a New Year's resolution for all (most) Americans who feel abandoned by their massive, bailed-out banks.

The campaign comes at an interesting time for small financial institutions. Since the 1980s, the number of banks with assets of $1 billion or less has fallen by more than half, according to Stacy Mitchell, head of the New Rules' Community Banking Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

As small banks and credit unions have gone out of business or been eaten up by the big banks, Americans have gotten used to banking at a distance. The banking experience is now usually characterized by automatic tellers, automated phone-trees, and other forms of faceless communication.

Of course, the growth of national banks has increased some conveniences, such as ATMs you can access anywhere in the country, but who cares about saving two dollars on your withdrawals when your bank is perfectly willing to up your credit card rate from 4.99 to 40.99 percent in one fell swoop (as Citi did to one man with good credit) for no fathomable reason? You're just as faceless to them as they are to you.

With examples such as these, Move Your Money hopes to dispel longstanding myths that big banks are cheaper -- and nicer -- than smaller ones.

A growing movement

As of this week, 23,000 -- or about 50 percent -- of all U.S. zip codes have been searched for through Move Your Money's "Find a Bank" feature, says Dennis Santiago, whose influential bank-rating firm Institutional Risk Analytics donated the tool.

One community bank with five branches in Northern California recently called Santiago to report it had a $1 million increase in deposits per branch since the start of the campaign, which the bank had not yet caught wind of.

While Move Your Money's search tool only includes community banks, the Credit Union Times reports that since the start of the campaign, two of the largest credit union associations have reported 300 percent search increases in their credit union databases since Move Your Money launched.

The American Debt Relief Challenge, which aims to get people to transfer their credit card balances from big banks to credit unions, shows that Americans have saved nearly $20 million by transferring. That's a monthly average of $200 in amortized savings per consumer, says Jamie Chase, a principal at Credit Union Strategic Planning, which is a sponsor of the challenge.

Local governments are jumping on the bandwagon, too. In New Mexico, a bill's been introduced to move the state's $1.4 billion cash account from Bank of America to local banks. In Oregon, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Bill Bradbury, is basing much of his candidacy on moving the state's money to Oregon-only community banks. And Michael Bloomberg, the New York City mayor who built his billionaire empire on financial information services, announced the city would move $25 million of its municipal tax dollars to neighborhood credit unions.

Even ANWF, which had based its organizing around breaking up the banks last year, will be waging a similar campaign that launches in a week, says Tiffiniy Cheng, ANWF's national coordinator. Called Break Up With Your Bank, it will ask people to stop using their credit cards and use cash as much as possible. If you must have a credit card, switch to a low-interest card from a local bank, Cheng says.

It's no surprise so many are so into the idea of moving capital into their communities. For starters, with smaller banks, you can kiss all that hollow interaction goodbye.

"Smaller banks can take a closer, personal look. Your loan request won't be decided by a computer model," says Stacy Mitchell. "A loan officer there understands the local market characteristics, sees the borrower as a person with an individual character and history."

The face-to-face service is a plus but Mitchell's research shows even bigger incentives for making the switch. She says community banks and credit unions are very viable and generate real benefits for the communities in which they're located. Among the benefits she cites are more small business lending, lower costs for consumers, better lending practices and the nurturing of social capital on the local level.

Santiago, the bank-rater, agrees with most of these points but says lower costs for consumers can be spotty, depending on the financial institution.

That being said, however: "Right now, there are more good small banks than good big banks. And you should move your money to good banks," he says.

The naysayers

While there is a great deal of populist excitement behind Move Your Money, it also has a few detractors.

Just this week, Doug Henwood, publisher of the economic affairs newsletter, Left Business Observer, wrote: "Money is fungible, protean, and highly mobile even when it looks locally rooted."

To illustrate the argument, Henwood used Move Your Money's search tool to find recommended community banks in his area and discovered that one offered wealth management services through Merrill Lynch (now owned by Bank of America) in addition to being a major financier of the gentrification of predominantly black neighborhoods. Another suggested bank had three-quarters of its assets in U.S. Treasury bonds, instead of local loans.

"It's very, very hard to keep your hands clean in the world," Henwood said. "I generally tell people to hold their nose and do the right things with the rest of their lives because you can't really do a lot of good with your money."

Stacy Mitchell, however, points out that the Move Your Money search tool is not all-inclusive, adding: "Small financial institutions are far more oriented toward the needs of their local communities and the productive economy than big banks are. As a group, banks under $1 billion in assets have less than two percent of their assets lent via the federal funds market to other banks. They devote 67 percent of their assets to lending, almost all within their city or region, and more than one-quarter of that goes to small business lending."

Moving our money may not be enough on its own, Mitchell says, "but to suggest that the choices we make in the marketplace have absolutely no meaning is absurd."

Even Henwood concedes there are some "pretty great community development" banks worth moving your money to, if you do the research. Indeed, both community banks (which are for-profit) and credit unions (which are non-profit) can qualify for Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) certification, which means they are committed to offering financial services to under-banked markets or populations.

Naturally, there are detractors at the top, too. Last month Politico asked Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner whether he felt the Move Your Money campaign was a good idea. "I don't," he said, before adding that he believes consumers have a right to demand better service from their financial institutions.

From the grassroots up

The Move Your Money campaign has made many people realize that some elements of financial reform may lie in their own hands. While cynics may point out that populist reforms can only take you so far, one idea behind Move Your Money is that this grassroots take on financial reform -- if it continues to have impact and grow -- may actually increase the possibility of financial reform at the federal level.

The banking behemoths have used our dollars to destroy the economy. We can use those same dollars to fight back.

Hey Congress -- Stand up to Wall Street!

2010-02-07T02:39:00.001-08:00

If Congress won't stand up to wal-street, then it is TIME to elect a new congress!!!

Hey Congress -- Stand up to Wall Street!
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog
Posted on February 6, 2010, Printed on February 6, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145559/

Senator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms” needed by the public. “The fact is,” Dodd said, “I am frustrated, and so are the American people.” He charged that Wall Street’s intransigence was the reason for Congress’s failure to pass any bill to regulate the Street. “The refusal of large financial firms to work constructively with Congress on this effort borders on insulting to the American people who have lost so much in this crisis.”

In other words, it isn’t Congress’s fault. It isn’t the Senate Banking Committee’s fault. It certainly isn’t Dodd’s fault. The reason more than a year has passed since the biggest bailout in the history of the world and nothing has been done to prevent a repeat performance — even as the biggest banks are doling out more than $30 billion of bonuses, even as Goldman Sachs is awarding its big traders $16 billion in bonuses (more than the $13 billion Goldman collected from taxpayers via the bailout of AIG), even as AIG itself is handing out bonuses — the reason is … what, exactly, Senator? Because the Street has sent an army of lobbyists to Capitol Hill?

Call me old fashioned, but I thought Congress was in charge of passing legislation, not Wall Street.

Dodd left out the most telling detail, of course. Wall Street is where the campaign money is. Dodd of all people knows that. He’s been on the receiving end of lots of it over the years.

Wall Street firms and their executives have been uniquely generous to both political parties, emerging recently as one of the largest benefactors of the Democratic Party. Between November 2008 and November 2009, Wall Street firms and executives handed out $42 million to lawmakers, mostly to members of the House and Senate banking committees and House and Senate leaders. During the 2008 elections, Wall Street showered Democratic candidates with well over $88 million and Republicans with over $67 million, putting the Street right up there with the insurance industry as among the nation’s largest equal-opportunity donors.

Some Democrats are quietly grumbling that all the tough talk emanating from the White House in recent weeks — the President calling the Street’s denizens “fat cats” and threatening them with limits on their size and the risks they can take, even waiving a watered-down version of Glass-Steagall in their faces — is making it harder to collect money from the Street this mid-term election year. And the Street is quietly threatening that it may well give Republicans more, if the saber-rattling doesn’t stop.

Congress isn’t doing a thing about Wall Street because it’s in the pocket of Wall Street. Dodd’s outburst at the Street is like the alcoholic who screams at a bartender “how dare you give me another drink when all I’ve done is pleaded with you for one!”

Dodd is right about one thing. The American people are frustrated, and the failure of Congress to pass real financial reform is insulting. But in trying to place responsibility for this appalling failure on Wall Street, Dodd insults us even more.

In the Face of King Coal, Tree Sitters Triumph

2010-02-03T14:12:00.000-08:00

I hail from a holler closeby to West Virginia (southern Ohio). It's something I don't talk about BEcause of my hillbilly roots, I was treated like white trash all my life. Even in employment, I was never good enough to be hired for a decent job although I spent 12 years in universities getting an education to improve the Quality of My Life. More, they say I'm one of the smartest human BEings on the planet. But if you come from the Appalachia Mountains, you're a pariah. That that is what the Big Boss Men think about the Precious 'Hills'!!! They have no respect for me and my kin and they have no respect for the land of my ancestors. Every time I see a raped mountain (see photo below), I freak out! IT MAKES ME WEEP! I WEEP FROM MY SOUL! I *BLESS* THOSE PROTESTORS WHO RISK EVERYTHING TO PROTECT AND SAVE THESE SACRED PLACES!!!

http://www.opednews.com/articles/In-the-Face-of-King-Coal--by-Kevin-Gosztola-100203-239.html

February 3, 2010
In the Face of King Coal, Tree Sitters Triumph
By Kevin Gosztola

As the Obama Administration continues to glorify the use of "clean" coal to solve America's energy problems, a movement of Americans in Appalachia consistently is engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience against coal interests in West Virginia, which support a destructive form of mining known as mountaintop removal (MTR) that involves blowing the tops off of mountains to get to the coal.

Mountain Justice and Climate Ground Zero, groups withindividuals who regularly put their bodies on the line to stop the use of explosives on mountains,recently concluded a major "tree sit" that lasted nine days. A recent drop in temperature was responsible for the activists' decision.

Tree-sitters were immediately arrested by West Virginia State Troopers when they left the trees, but that was no problem. Over the course of nine days the tree sitters received national media attention, forced the West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin to meet with activists, and clogged the phone system at Massey Energy and the governor's office with call-in days.

The tree-sitters occupied trees on Coal River Mountain to halt the blasting of it.

Richard Bradford explained, "Coal River Mountain [is] the last mountain around here that hasn't been touched and they [could be] using it for windmills"But Massey wants to get that coal. It seems like they just don't care about the populace. Just the land and their checkbook."

There's nothing clean about coal and nor will there really ever be. "Clean" coal is a devious political buzz phrase that the people of this country need to consistently cut through.

"Clean" coal consistently presents the American people with tremendous costs and injustices. It increases the rates of disease. The American Lung Association has found that 24,000 people each year die prematurely because of coal-fired power plants. Every year 38,000 heart attacks, 12,000 hospital admissions, and an additional 550,000 astham attacks occur as a result of power plant pollution. And, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that 12,000 miners died from black lung disease between 1992 and 2002.

Also, burning "clean" coal emits mercury due to electrical generation and mercury is hugely responsible for interfering with the development of babies' brains and neurological systems if it gets into a mother's blood or breast milk. This production of mercury also pollutes seafood and freshwater fish.

Activists taking on King Coal will now have a day in federal court. Over the course of the action, seven were arrested and Massey Energy now seeks $75,000 for "damages."

Total cost of bail for the activists was $9,625 and two tree-sitters remain in jail until each can raise funds for their bail, $2,500 (cash-only). [The activists encourage those who want to help to go to PayPalor, the website for Climate Ground Zero. ]

Over the course of the action, the tree sitters endured the typical harassment that activists have grown to expect from police or security.

Climate Ground Zero reported on January 27th:

"While the tree sitters conduct this non-violent protest of mountaintop removal, they face constant harassment from Massey Security. The security personnel have been blasting five airhorns just below the sitters' platforms to force the sitters to descend. At one point, security personnel tied a rope to a thinner tree next to the one occupied by Nitchman, and repeatedly pulled and released the rope so that it would hit the bottom of Nitchman's platform. Discussion of spraying the sitters with firehoses has been heard over two-way radios. The police have been shown the appropriate West Virginia legal statute, 61-3E-10, have acknowledged the felony endangerment,and have declined to take any action. Prosecutors and Manchins' office have also refused to act after being notified of the situation and the laws that Massey is breaking."

News of harassment and possible violence against protesters led hundreds to contact Gov. Manchin, who "promised" that violence would not be tolerated.

Massey Energy put out a statement on the tree sit. In it, the company stated:

"Protestors, probably from out of state, are again putting themselves, coal miners and law enforcement personnel in danger by their illegal actions at Massey's operation at Coal River Mountain. Their actions have not stopped operations at the site."

The company sought to make West Virginians angry that violent environmentalists might be coming in their state and creating a situation. They ultimately went on to try and discredit the activists and claim that what they were saying about what Massey Energy does on Coal River Mountain is false. (You can read more from Massey and Climate Ground Zero's rebuttal here.)

Flickr Photo byClean Coal is Dirty

West Virginians and the people of Appalachia are on the front lines, but that doesn't mean that the people of the United States cannot be joining their struggle. Every state that uses coal bears a connection to the plight of the Appalachians whose environment and human rights are consistently wronged by the determination of King Coal and the way the politicians protect and preserve coal interests at the expense of poor and working class people.

For example, a group based in Illinois that is not afraid to challenge the United States' interest in coal and the promotion of this myth of "clean" coal, is Topless America. They are a group of students, artists, and activists dedicated to documenting the fight against America's coal industry. They seek to aid in the Appalachian battle to preserve and protect the land and people from the wrath of coal companies like Massey Energy and are in post-production on a feature length documentary.

Parson Brown from Topless America said:

"It's time for us all to find our stance, take it, and energize a revolution peacefully before we end up in one hell of an "energy, etc" crisis. We must demand a stop to mountaintop removal and work realistically and responsibly to transition our country - our people - our planet into a coal free future, without playing men and women against their jobs or each other."

More people need to be, as Mother Jones said, "agitators for progress." Suffering and injustice in the world demands we not be content and calls upon us to act accordingly.

It's Resistance Now Or Never!

2010-02-03T14:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/It-s-Resistance-Now-Or-Nev-by-Paul-A-Moore-100129-324.html

February 2, 2010
By Paul A. Moore

Something the valiant but outgunned defenders of public education in the United States must now consider is the changed face of the enemy. The oligarchs; Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton Family, the Bush Family, Michael Bloomberg and the CEOs represented in the Business Roundtable, have directed the assault on public schools for the past two decades. They were supremely confident they could bring to fruition Milton Friedman's dream of education turned into a highly profitable industry. As it turned out though, they were cursed with an Achilles Heel. Their plan was inextricably bound to the fate of a global capitalist economy.

That global capitalist economy is over now. Why? Well, because globalization was so successful in its brief heyday. It penetrated every market on the planet. It stomped out the Soviet Union in the Cold War and took over the Russian economy. And who ever imagined China, closed off to the West not 30 years ago, could become the largest market for big-ticket consumer goods like automobiles in 2009? Also, globalization found the absolute lowest wage possible in the undeveloped world. The profit addicts bumped right up against outright slavery and, where possible, went over the edge. Today more human beings are in bondage than any time in human history.

But the system's success exhausted the possibilities for growth. And growth is its lifeblood. Growth kept it healthy and dynamic. When that growth became impossible, capitalism turned inward. It began feeding on itself. That's when Wall Street turned Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers and the other investment banks into casinos. That's when M.I.T.-trained mathematicians were summoned to make investment vehicles into computer generated logarithms beyond human comprehension. Since no more real wealth was being created, the bankers were forced to resort to alchemy, in the form of derivatives, to give the appearance of wealth creation. Meanwhile, the truly productive corporate entities, even the largest of them, began being interned. R.I.P General Motors!

The other thing a global economy had to have if it was going to work was a plentiful and cheap supply of oil. If the world is not now on the downside of the Peak Oil curve, it's close enough for government work in the US, China, India, Russia, the EU. Rulers in these developed and developing countries have begun to act along those lines. For instance, the US won't be getting out of the Middle East anytime soon because it is a major source of a dwindling world oil supply. US military presence there has nothing to do with politicians' silly bleatings over "underwear bombers" or terrorism. And for another instance, economic nationalism, in the form of US tariffs on Chinese steel to give one example, is the wave of the future. Globalization cannot withstand the end of free trade or oil-driven trade, but it faces both simultaneously. It will crash and burn as a result.

A US soldier or two, away from the harrowing places they have been sent to secure oil, when given time to consider, have probably wondered why their government has contracted with Blackwater (now Xe)-type mercenaries at 10 times the price to pull duties once assigned to them. It is completely absurd on its face. The product of a hidden agenda is always absurdity. Globalization, which seeks privatization of all things, is that agenda.

Teachers across this country have come to live every day with this absurdity. Incessant testing with no relation to the real world, the mindless collection of trivia classified as data, forcing a "business model" like Enron or Lehman Brothers or General Motors on the public schools, driving the arts and the social sciences out of the curriculum, and watching every Chancellor, Superintendent, Commissioner, and Secretary of Education promote charter schools over their own public schools at every turn. Absurd! But again the product of a hidden agenda is always absurdity.

Because we are bombarded with it by the corporate media, there is the temptation to believe the global economy will enjoy a "recovery" and the US will visit even greater heights of material prosperity. This is a delusion that is being foisted on the American people. It's part of a scam. There is no rational reason for this system to be revived and there are oligarchs, and people at Goldman Sachs, and people in the US government and military who know this. They have left behind some functionaries in the public schools, "dead-enders" like Michelle Rhee in Washington D.C. and Joel Klein in NYC to soldier on with the corporate catechism. They have not bothered to demobilize the cults created to undermine the public schools -- Teach For America, Green Dot and KIPP charter schools -- but the true believers and their cults are no longer a credible threat.

The new danger appears in the rise of the seamless melding of the corporation and the state in the US. The corporate-state was certified as constitutional by the US Supreme Court in its recent decision on corporate campaign financing. The new reality is reflected in the unprecedented amount of money Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suddenly has at his disposal to undermine the public schools. Duncan has put the 50 states in a competition he calls the Race To The Top, to become the most effective at destroying public education and advancing the charter school movement. Duncan will spread over $4-billion among the "winning" states. The denial of funds is expected to finish off public education in the "losing" states.

Some people are confused as to why President Obama's education policy is indistinguishable from that of George W. Bush. Well both are either willing servants or hostages of the same masters. In the transition from one administration to the next, the bankers' takeover of the US treasury never missed a beat. The military, one of the pillars of the corporate-state, allowed President Obama the public perception of choice on Afghanistan. But Gen. Stanley McCrystal was ordering, not requesting, more troops. Another pillar of the corporate-state, the insurance companies and pharmaceuticals, have humored Obama with the idea they would allow national health care reform. They've tired of the theatrics and ordered up Scott Brown in Massachusetts the other day to bring the curtain down on it.

With regard to the public schools and every other vestige of democracy in US society, the corporate-state is the last stage where fighting back will be possible. Next comes the national curriculum from Winston Smith's world.

It's resistance now or never.

The Cabal: Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand

2010-02-03T10:42:00.000-08:00

http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/6934

The Cabal: Power Concedes Nothing Without A Demand
By: Fahim A. Knight

The American people, in particular and the world in general, have no real idea that everything around them isn't what it appears. There has always been and old saying that states, “perception means everything and reality, means absolutely nothing.” Interpret to mean you have to just look good and not necessarily be of any substance. President George Bush just has to look and sound good, but in reality, all of his decisions and all of our decisions are under the dictates of some powerful hidden entitles. President George Bush appears to be one of the most powerful men in the world and yet he is under the dictates of the real and invisible decision makers. He was elevated in 2000 to the highest office in world because of a willingness to serve and carryout their well calculated agenda. Does he work for the House of Rothschild, the Carlyle Group, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Russell Group, and Bilderberger Group? (Reference: Texe Marrs: “Circle of Intrigue: The Hidden Inner Circle of the Global Illuminati Conspiracy”)

Dr. John Coleman in his book titled, “Conspirators Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of the 300” stated, “It is the Committee of 300 which has established control networks and mechanisms far more binding than anything ever seen in this world. Chains and ropes are not needed to restrain us. Our fears of what is to come does that job far more efficiently than any physical means of restraint. We have been brainwashed to give up our Constitutional right to bear arms; to give up our Constitution itself; to allow the United Nations to exercise control over our foreign policies and the IMF to take control of our fiscal and monetary policies; to permit the President to break United States law with impunity and to invade a foreign country and kidnap its head of state. In short we have been brainwashed to the extent where we, as a nation, will accept each and every lawless act carried out by our government almost without question.” (Reference: Dr. John Coleman: “Conspirators Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of the 300”).

How many people truly believe and know that there is an Elite Cabal of Emperors who function with autonym and world sovereignty, and are above the laws of all nations? This writer recently watched President Bush meet with King Abdullah, the Royal King of Saudi Arabia and they were so-called discussing Saudi Arabia’s possibilities of increasing Oil Production drilling (at least that is what they conveyed on camera) and what OPEC can do to so-called ease the Oil tension in the West. This writer said to himself, Wow! "How many people believe that OPEC can make that decision and fail to understand that OPEC is just a Front Organization for the Cabal and the Hidden Emperors?" The mass mediums sent their talking heads and spin doctors out to convince the American people, in particular and world the people in general, that the Oil crisis is a matter of supply and demand. The last time this writer checked, the price of crude Oil, it had risen to over $130.00 USD per Barrel. Some of the ignorant would like to blame the Arabs—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Algeria, etc., for the Oil crisis and have no idea that someone more powerful and more sinister is guiding this so-called crisis. Some would even prefer blaming Hugo Chavez the charismatic and idealist President of Venezuela for the United States Oil crises.

Andy Stern in his book titled, “Oil: From Rockefellers to Iraq and Beyond’ stated, “The freewheeling gold rush years in the US soon gave way to the all-devouring empire created by John D. Rockefeller, whose fortune was built on sharp business practices, corruption of government at the highest levels, and created of one of the most successful and enduring cartels the world has ever seen. Then as now in the US, government and Big Oil were closely interlinked. Rockefeller had agents all over the world, forming a semi-official a semi-official diplomatic structure that negotiated trade deals directly with national governments. Today, the links are even closer, with former oil executives occupying many of the top positions in the current US administration, and taking policy positions highly favourable to the industry in which they made their fortunes. As the thirst for oil, and the vast profits it offered, enticed companies beyond their national borders, British, French and US oil have sought to exploit oil resources overseas, and have not hesitated to corrupt or subvert governments, be they in Africa, Asia or Latin America, in order to gain control of these valuable assets.” (Reference: Andy Stern: “Oil: From Rockefellers to Iraq and Beyond’).

Thus, they had never heard of the Elite Dynastic Families, this inner secret Cabal that is so rich and powerful that they are hidden under many layers of deceptions. They have the ability to create international crisis—wars, economic recessions, political tension (instigating and supporting rivals on both sides), etc., for their benefits. The people have been reduced to mere pawns. This writer was having a discussion with some of the KEEPING IT REAL think tank members and the question came up, about Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, in particular, but here is the top 20 billionaires of the world listed by Forbes—Carlos Slim Helu, Lakshmi Mittal, Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani, Ingvar Kamprad, KP Singh, Oleg Deripaska, Karl Albrecht, Li Ka-shing, Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Arnault, Lawrence Ellison, Roman Abramovich, Theo Albrecht, Liliane Bettencourt, Alexei Mordashov, Prince Alwaleed, Mikhail Fridman, etc., being two of the most wealthiest and powerful men in the world. This writer started laughing because even some of them did not understand that these public billionaires were nothing but front men and gophers; they have no power even with all the billions of dollars, they have accrued. Gates and Buffet, as well as all the others listed on the public billionaire list are agents for the secret Cabal.

The Oil crisis has nothing to do with supply and demand, but is being driven by greed and motivated by the lust of power. They have the ability dismiss and invite whom they please. Do you remember prior the 9/11 (September 11, 2001) hoax, the Nation of Libya and the Arab Jamahiriya was considered a "Rogue Nation" and part of what Bush called the “Axis of Evil”. Muammar al- Qaddafi in 1969 after overthrowing King Idris, became the champion of a Pan-Arabism, and Pan-Islamism causes, but more importantly he supported liberation struggles around the world. For example, in Sub-Sahara Africa, Central and South America (I can recall him embracig Daniel Ortega back in the 1980s, Fidel Castro of Cuba, Maurice Bishop of Grenada, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso and supported African liberation struggles in various parts of Sub-Sahara Africa from West Africa too Cape Town . He also supported the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Ireland, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) against Zionist occupation of Palestinian’s land and territories; Qaddafi even back in the 1980s gave Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, a five (5) million dollar interest free loan and was cozy with the Nation of Islam’s patriarch, Elijah Muhammad. Qaddafi was considered by America and Israeli propaganda machines as public enemy number one. (Reference: Noam Chomsky: “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance.”)

But after 9/11 hoax and the United States invasion of Iraq; thus, Qaddafi had seemed to soften his anti-American and anti-West political rhetoric and even submitted to an international compromise over the 1988 Lockerbie, Scotland incident, where as 270 people were killed in what was deemed as a terrorist act, which Libyan nationals were accused. Qaddafi began to gradually shake off the label of being an exponent in exporting terrorism around the world and even furthered soften his rhetoric against the West. He disbanded his aspirations of acquiring Nuclear Weapons capability as a North African Nation in order to set a military balance in the Middle East between the Muslims (Arabs) and the Israeli (Jews). The United States and the United Nations even lifted the trade embargoes and economic sanctions against Libya that were imposed almost three decades ago as a measure of rewarding Qaddafi for demonstrating good behavior. The seven OIL SISTERS—Exxon, Mobil, British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil, Texaco, Gulf (As of 2005, the surviving companies are ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, now members of the "supermajors" group). and their hidden profiteers are the ones that determine the Oil Market and they have had their eyes have on Tripoli for over three decades. (Reference: William C. Chasey: “Pan AM 103: Lockerbie Cover Up”)

This writer grew to admire Muammar al- Qaddafi and was very much disappointed in his flip-flop positions and now has to question whether or no he was an agent provocateur for the Cabal all the while.

They do not give a damn about some Islamic Sheik in Saudi Arabia or some crooked rogue government in Nigeria or even the sovereignty of these nations means absolutely nothing to them. These Oil producing Nations and leaders have mortgage their people and nations, over to the Secret Cabal. Did Muammar Qaddafi, the self-proclaimed revolutionary who once had a vision to unite the nation of Libya and Egypt and advocated a United Federated States of Africa; he also chaired the Organization of African Unity (OAU), but carried out some reactionary politics in Chad and Niger; was he a pawn of the Cabal all the while? I must reference Allen and Larry Abraham's book titled, "None Dare Call it Conspiracy." They talked about how the Cabal applies pressure from the top and pressure from the bottom, which to create the political, economic and social conditions to ascertain the results they desire. Perhaps they have invited Qaddafi and the Nation of Libya to the table, which to partake in the economic crumbs.

However, Libya and Cuba had to find out the hard way and a difficult lesson because they had brought into NATO (representative of the United States and the West and WARSAW PACT nations representative of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc Nations), but in 1989 only to discover that there were no real antagonistic contradictions between Socialism and Capitalism; Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Regan were both low level operatives that was only carrying out their assignments. Soviet Union wasn't dismantled nor did it collapse.

It was reorganized and strategically set-up for the betterment of the international bankers—to access the Siberian Oil fields and using companies like LUKOIL—to grease the palms of the international bankers that sit on top of Moscow. The Cabal—the International Bankers who inspired and instigated 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and gave life to the concept of a Socialist Revolution; did it for their own political and economic interest. Moreover, by 1989, they had, had enough of Leninism, Marxism, Stalinism and this naive concept that the major means of production and distribution were owned and controlled by the State and that Communism benefited the masses of its people. Communism from its inception ultimately only benefited the Russian Elite and that small Hidden Minority that rule the world. (Reference: Gary Allen and Larry Abraham: “None Dare Call it Conspiracy”)

William Cooper who authored one of the best treatise in helping us decode these conspiracies and exposed the agenda of the Cabal stated in his monumental book titled, “Behold A Pale Horse,” stated, “Many of them, however, disagree on exactly who will rule this New World Order, and that is what causes them to sometimes pull in opposite directions while nevertheless proceeding toward the same goal. The Vatican, for instance, wants the Pope to head the world coalition. Some want Lord Maitreya to head the New World Order. Lord Maitreya is the front runner, I believe, since witnesses say he was present on the ship at Malta with Bush and Gorbachev, and the ten regional heads of the New World Order. ‘Approximately 200 dignitaries from around the world attended a major conference initiated by Maitreya in London on April 21 and 22, 1990. Representatives of governments (including the USA) members of royal families, religious leaders. . .” (Reference: William Cooper: “Behold A Pale Horse.”)

The Oil crisis is an artificial crisis—The United States and the West consumes over 70 percent of this vital commodity (the West is truly an Oil Junkie) and the international bankers and the market wizards will continue to feed them, as much as they desire to consume, at an escalated and inflated financial rate. Bush who is a masterful conman has even suggested that the Oil Crisis should be blamed in part, on the American people, because the conservation advocates and the naturalist, have put up such political opposition to Oil drilling in Alaska and not allowing Bush Government to possible destroying the sanctity of this virgin wilderness, but most of us know that Halliburton and energy tycoon, Vice President Dick Chaney is licking his chops along with Bush because the Cabal will handsomely reward them if Alaska, the last Oil Reserves in the United States is open up for drilling, as well as, for economic and mineral exploitation.

The international bankers and the Cabal always manage to get what they want. The rising fuel cost on the consumer level, is designed to create that pressure from the top and pressure from the bottom in order to foster a condition where as the masses of the people will be propelled to believe and accept that giving Bush the authority to drill for Oil in Alaska will somehow alleviate the immediate Oil crisis in the United States. No, it will only further enrich the Cabal and the international bankers to the detriment of the suffering masses.

The United States in 1991 colonized Kuwait (although up until 1947 Kuwait was a part of Iraq, but British instigation led to Kuwait succeeding from Iraq and from that perspective Saddam Hussein was absolutely correct) and March 20, 2003 Bush and the United States Government began their efforts to colonize Iraq, the second largest Oil Reserve in the world and when these reactionaries forces went into Iraq, the international cost for a barrel of Iraqi Crude Oil was $ 29.00 USD per barrel and it now stands at $130.00 USD per barrel just five years later. The bloodsuckers of the poor keep human resistance at a minimum by selling the masses and nations, unbearable debt, which consumes them and dim resistance. The Cabal set-up the European Common Market and Euro currency, which to destabilize Western European Nation's sovereignty and to compromise nationalism, all for their benefit. The one currency concept had been in the making for a very long time; just as The United States, Canada, and Mexico and perhaps all points south, will eventually convert their money over to a new money currency called Amero. This will only further empower the Rothschild’s, Rockefellers, Oppenheimers, Morgans in their enslavement over humanity.

In the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” Protocol number 24 stated, “I pass now to the method of confirming Dynastic Roots King David to the last strata of the earth. This confirmation will first and foremost be included in that in which to this day has rested the force of conservatism by our Learned Elders of the conduct of all the affairs of the world, in directing of the education of thought of all of humanity. Certain members of the seed of David will prepare the kings and their heirs, selecting not by right of heritage but by eminent capacities, inducting them into the most secret mysteries of the political, into schemes of government, but providing always that none may come to knowledge of the secrets. The object of this mode of action is that all may know that government cannot be entrusted to those who have not been inducted into the secret places of its arts.” (Reference: “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”).

Did you know that in 1967 a one world government system was organized in Geneva, Switzerland by a United Nations meeting? and on that date, they decided to dissolve the United Nations to make room for a One World Government. The One World Government will seize all possessions, savings and personal bank deposits. Every man, woman and child will receive a certain amount of money and a number from the One World Government system. The One World Government currency is already printed and ready to be put in circulation. Every dollar will be traded. You will in the near future receive one dollar for every ten dollars; the banker will handle what money you get, eventually we will not be handling any money. At that same United Nations meeting they stated that you would receive a number from the One World Government. In March of 1974, it was stated by the European economic market that they needed a leader. They initially suggested Henry Kissinger as leader of the New World Order.

Carroll Quigley in his monumental book titled, “Tragedy and Hope”, stated, “I know the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies. . .but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”

The majority of the American people and the people of the world do not understand that there is no such thing as democracy—one man, one vote, this is only an illusion designed to give the impression and to pacify the ignorant masses into believing that they matter in the political systems of the world and it is just to the contrary. The Cabal will never leave picking their high power servants and operatives up to a ballot box and at the political discretion of an electoral process. Voting is only a matter of going through the motions and placating the ignorant masses, but the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberger they are the real POWER BROKERS, it is their job to select the next United States president and your vote, popular vote count, delegates, superdelegates, etc., do not factor into their decision; thus, regardless of the outcomes that will take place at the Democrat and Republican National Conventions. Many of you will not believe that the next United States president has already been selected and decided upon and he is prepared to serve; although the general election is slated for November 2008 and you have yet to cast your ballots. (Reference: David Icke: “The Biggest Secret”).

It does not matter whether the presidential candidate is John McCain, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton; they have not ascended up the political latter on their own recognizance. They are fully aware who they owe their allegiance and it is not to the American people. Some will try to dismiss my research as mere conspiracy theories and fail to grasp the fact that these are dangerous times which we live. The next United States president has already been given a play book, script and agenda, which is not up for negotiation or deviation; for execution only. United States domestic and Foreign Policy agenda is already set for next eight (8) years and for that matter, the political agenda for the entire world has also been set. Senator McCain has made it crystal clear that if he had to, he would commit United States troops to Iraq for next 100 years; either this is a backwards decision or is McCain given us a hint of what to expect from U.S. Foreign policy the next eight years—this sounds like business as usual, and as an extension of George Bush's cowboy and wild, wild west reactionary Foreign Policy agenda.

William Cooper, “Behold A Pale Horse” goes on to state, “It is important that you know that the members of the Order take and oath that absolves them from any allegiance to a any nation or king or government or constitution, and that includes the negating of any subsequent oath of allegiance which they may be required to take. They swear allegiance only to the Order and its goal of a New World Order. George Bush is not a loyal citizen of the United States but instead is loyal only to the destruction of the United States and to the formation of the New World Order. According to the oath Bush took when he was initiated into the Skull & Bones, his oath of office as President of the United States of America means nothing.”

The Hidden Emperors have their sights on Oil and every nation and their people are considered expendable in lieu of profits, greed and accumulation of wealth. How much money is enough? The United States war machines continues to murder thousands upon thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens in name of Oil diplomacy. They have raked up these immoral and unethical tragedies in Iraq, as the price of doing business. These are criminal acts, but who can make war with the beast other than God himself. The Hidden Emperors have Muslims fighting and debating over artificial labels and concepts—Sunni versus Shia instigating and creating sectarian tension and violence and then removing their filthy hand as though they are innocent.

But their motive is stealing Oil and they are trying to set the stage to attack and invade Iran by demonizing President Mahmoud Ahmadjindine, which to justify going into Iran an stealing more oil. The next United States President will have his marching orders and do not be surprised if U.S. Foreign policy does not lead them right into Tehran, but what can not be overlooked, is that the Israelis (Zionist Jews) influence that is driving the United States into deep international isolation, specifically in the so-called Middle East. You can not have a one-sided debate and conversation relative to the Palestinians (Arabs) and the Israelis (Jews) over the question of land rights and sovereignty. Both sides must-be held equally accountable, if you are serious about one day achieving a peaceful resolution and compromise in Palestine. Bush and the United States Government is quick to condemn and repudiate Hamas and Hezbollah for so-called using Lebanon as a terrorist haven and yet did not criticize the Israelis unprovoked attacked against Lebanon in 2006. The United States Foreign Policy in the Middle East can not be based on double standards. (Reference: Obadiah Shoher: “Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East”).

The world continues to be duped and misled by an evil Cabal who has wrapped its tentacles around the whole of humanity and controls every facet of our lives; they use their most powerful tool—the media, both electronic and print, to lure us to sleep and most of all make their thoughts our thoughts. They work out of various fronts such as the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberger, etc., but is by no stretch of the imagination limited to these three powerful organizations. They intertwine with Freemasonry (I mean high degree Masonry and I am not referring to those who are initiated in 33rd degree; there is a Dynastic Freemasonic brotherhood—that evolves around blood lineage and wealth, which this Order is not open to rank and file Freemasons). The Cabal is the one pulling the purse strings on the Oil crisis and they are motivated by greed and power. President Bush is a loyal pawn and is only following the orders given to him by this INVISIBLE CABAL. John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all have swore loyalty to continue the AGENDA.

Fahim A. Knight Chief Researcher for KEEPING IT REAL THINK TANK located in Durham, NC; our mission is to inform African Americans and all people of good will of the pending dangers that lie ahead; as well as decode the symbolisms and reinterpret the hidden meanings behind those who operate as invisible forces, but covertly rules the world. We are of the belief that an enlighten world will be better prepared to throw off the shackles of ignorance and not be willing participants for the slaughter. Our MOTTO is speaking truth to power. Fahim A. Knight can be reached at fahimknight@yahoo.com.

STAY AWAKE UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN,
Fahim A. Knight

America’s System Failure: Only a Wave of Democratic Participation Can Save This Country

2010-02-03T10:41:00.001-08:00

By Christopher Hayes, The Nation
Posted on February 3, 2010, Printed on February 3, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145521/

There is a widespread consensus that the decade we've just brought to a close was singularly disastrous for the country: the list of scandals, crises and crimes is so long that events that in another context would stand out as genuine lowlights -- Enron and Arthur Andersen's collapse, the 2003 Northeast blackout, the unsolved(!) anthrax attacks -- are mere afterthoughts. We still don't have a definitive name for this era, though Paul Krugman's 2003 book The Great Unraveling captures well the sense of slow, inexorable dissolution; and the final crisis of the era, what we call the Great Recession, similarly expresses the sense that even our disasters aren't quite epic enough to be cataclysmic. But as a character in Tracy Letts's 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, August: Osage County, says, "Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm." American progressives were the first to identify that something was deeply wrong with the direction the country was heading in and the first to provide a working hypothesis for the cause: George W. Bush. During the initial wave of antiwar mobilization, in 2002, much of the ire focused on Bush himself. But as the decade stretched on, the causal account of the country's problems grew outward in concentric circles: from Bush to his administration (most significantly, Cheney) to the Republican Party to -- finally (and not inaccurately) -- the entire project of conservative governance.

As much of the country came to share some version of this view (tenuously, but share it they did), the result was a series of Democratic electoral sweeps and a generation of Americans, the Millennials, with more liberal views than any of their elder cohorts. But it always seemed possible that the sheer reactionary insanity of the Bush administration would have a conservatizing effect on the American polity. Because things had gone so wrong, it was a more than natural reaction to long for the good old days; the Clinton years, characterized by deregulation and bubbles, seemed tantalizingly placid and prosperous in retrospect. The atavistic imperialism of the Bush administration had a way of making the pre-Bush foreign policy of soft imperialism and subtle bullying look positively saintly.

Toward the end of the decade, as the establishment definitively rebuked Bush and sought to distance itself from his failures, the big-tent center-left coalition took on an influential constituency -- the Colin Powells and Warren Buffetts -- who didn't want reform so much as they wanted restoration. This was reflected in a strange internal tension in the Obama campaign rhetoric that simultaneously promised both: change you can believe in and, as Obama said at a March 2008 appearance in Pennsylvania, a foreign policy that is "actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush's father."

If the working hypothesis that bound this unwieldy coalition together -- independents, most liberals and the Washington establishment -- was that the nation's troubles were chiefly caused by the occupants of the White House, then this past year has served as a kind of natural experiment. We changed the independent variable (the party and people in power) and can observe the results. It is hard, I think, to come to any conclusion but that the former hypothesis was insufficient.

So what, exactly, is it that ails us?

In pondering the answer, it's useful to distinguish between two separate categories of problems we face. The first are the human, economic and ecological disasters that demand immediate action: a grossly inefficient healthcare sector, millions un- or underinsured, 10 percent unemployment, a planet that's warming, soaring personal bankruptcies, 12 million immigrants working in legal limbo, the list goes on. But the deeper problem, the ultimate cause of many of the first-order problems, is the perverse maldistribution of power in the country: too much in too few hands. It didn't happen overnight, of course, and the devolution has been analyzed and decried by a host of writers and thinkers in these very pages.

It's also not the first time. Indeed, the story of the American Republic is the never-ending task of redistributing power that always seems to collect and pool and re-form, a cycle in which we break up the power trusts, only to find them reassembling, Terminator 2-like, and requiring yet another dose of the founders' revolutionary fervor to be broken up again.

The central and unique paradox of our politics at this moment, however, is that our institutions are so broken, the government so sclerotic and dysfunctional, that in almost all cases, from financial bailouts to health insurance mandates, the easiest means of addressing the first set of problems is to take steps that exacerbate the second.

As an illustration, consider the following hypothetical.

You're a social worker or a parish priest in a poor urban neighborhood that lives under the malignant, if stable, stewardship of an organized-crime protection racket. The small business owners all have to pay a protection fee, which most of them can afford, but a significant portion of bodegas and nail salons operating on razor-thin profit margins struggle to come up with the money. When they fall short (which is often) they are subjected to beatings, harassment, vandalism and other petty cruelties.

Now, it turns out that you can raise enough money through your organization so that you can reliably cover the protection fees for the struggling shop owners operating on the margins. Whenever they can't come up with enough money, you can make up the difference. The improvement to residents' lives would be massive: no longer forced to live in fear, they would be allowed to transact their business and go about their lives free from the constant, degrading fear of physical violence. But by taking this action you would also be channeling revenue into the pockets of the protection racket and, perhaps more insidious, further entrenching its power by conceding its central premise: that all local businesses must pay up in order to survive.

This is, in rough allegorical fashion, the dilemma at the heart of the recent intra-left battle over the Senate version of the healthcare bill. Those arguing that the bill will be a massive step forward in reducing the misery of the uninsured are for the most part right. And those arguing that the Senate version of the bill is a grotesque sellout to Big Pharma and, to a lesser extent, Big Insurance, are more or less correct as well. When the White House used its muscle to kill a bipartisan amendment that would have allowed reimportation of drugs, it was as if our fictional social worker or priest took to shaking down shopkeepers to stay in the good graces of the local thugs. For what it's worth, I'm generally in the pay-off-the-thugs camp, because of the concrete benefits it would provide (Medicaid expansion for 15 million) but also because by enshrining the notion that the government is responsible for managing the healthcare system, the crimes of the insurance racket can now be laid at the feet of our politicians. In the short run, that accountability may spell political trouble; in the long run, I'm hopeful that it will force the government to crack down.

That said, the whole system that produced this legislative approach sucks, and recalls nothing so much as the Bush/GOP passage of Medicare Part D.

In the abstract, the putative goal of Medicare Part D was laudable (even if it was driven by Karl Rove's crass desire to curry favor with an important electoral demographic): reduce the cost of prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare. The method of achieving this laudable social end, however, was repugnant. Medicare was statutorily barred from using its market share to negotiate lower drug prices, thereby ensuring hefty (and largely unearned) profits for Big Pharma in perpetuity. Drug reimportation was off the table as well. And since Republicans don't believe in taxes, and our political institutions are increasingly incapable of raising revenue, none of it was paid for. One Democratic Senate aide told me that right before his boss voted for final passage of the bill, the senator turned to him and said, "So, I guess I have to go vote for this piece of shit."

At the time, Medicare Part D looked like the nadir of GOP governance, but two things have happened in the interim. One, the program, despite early chaos, has become quite popular: seniors like getting cheaper drugs. And two, the basic policy approach has been adopted, in somewhat altered form, by the Obama administration. We are all Medicare Part D now.

There's a word for a governing philosophy that fuses the power of government and large corporations as a means of providing services and keeping the wheels of industry greased, and it's a word that has begun to pop up among critics of everything from the TARP bailout to healthcare to cap and trade: corporatism. Since corporatism often merges the worst parts of Big Government and Big Business, it's an ideal target for both the left and right. The ultimate corporatist moment, the bailout, was initially voted down in the House by an odd-bedfellows coalition of Progressive Caucus members and right-wingers.

In the wake of the healthcare sausage-making, writers from Tim Carney on the right (author of the provocative Obamanomics) and Glenn Greenwald on the left have attacked the bill as the latest incarnation of corporatism, a system they see as the true enemy. There is even some talk among activists of a grand left-right populist coalition coming together to depose the entrenched interests that hold sway in Washington. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake touted her work with libertarians to oppose Ben Bernanke, more AIG bailouts and the Senate healthcare bill ("What we agree on: both parties are working against the interests of the public, the only difference is in the messaging"); David McKalip, the tea-party doctor who got into trouble for forwarding an image of Obama with a bone through his nose, wrote an open letter to the netroots proposing that they join him in fighting the "real enemy," the "unholy corporate/government cabal that will control your healthcare."

I don't think that coalition is going to emerge in any meaningful form. The right's anger is born largely of identity-based alienation, a fear of socialism (whatever that means nowadays) and an age-old Bircher suspicion that "they" are trying to screw "us." Even in its most sophisticated forms, such as in Carney's Obamanomics, the basic right-wing argument against corporatism embraces a kind of fatalism about government that assumes it will always devolve into a rat's nest of rent seekers and cronies and therefore should be kept as small as possible.

But the progressive critics hold that we can and should do better. The Medicare Part D model is a terrible way of running a government for a number of reasons. First, and most practical, it's expensive. When paying off protection rackets is the price of passing legislation, you have to come up with a lot more money. Allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices would have saved the government as much as $30 billion a year. The strong public option would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, save $85 billion over ten years. Once everyone has laid claim to their vig, you soon find yourself tapped out.

The second problem is that this form of governance degrades the integrity of the state. Historian Tony Judt made this point eloquently in his October 19 lecture "What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy." Delegating fundamental state activities to private actors, he said, "discredits the state." Instead of a straightforward relationship between citizen and state, we have a mediated one that has the potential to perversely feed the anti-statist arguments of the right as the state becomes, in Judt's words, "represented in the popular mind by a grasping private profiteer."

But the corporatism on display in Washington is itself a symptom of a broader social illness that I noted above, a democracy that is pitched precariously on the tipping point of oligarchy. In an oligarchy, the only way to get change is to convince the oligarchs that it is in their interest -- and increasingly, that's the only kind of change we can get.

In 1911 the German democratic socialist Robert Michels faced a similar problem, and it was the impetus for his classic book Political Parties. He was motivated by a simple question: why were parties of the left, those most ideologically committed to democracy and participation, as oligarchical in their functioning as the self-consciously elitist and aristocratic parties of the right?

Michels's answer was what he called "The Iron Law of Oligarchy." In order for any kind of party or, indeed, any institution with a democratic base to exist, it must have an organization that delegates tasks. As this bureaucratic structure develops, it invests a small group of people with enough power that they can then subvert the very mechanisms by which they can be held to account: the party press, party conventions and delegate votes. "It is organization which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors," he wrote, "of the mandataries over the mandators, of the delegates over the delegators. Who says organization, says oligarchy."

Michels recognized the challenge his work presented to his comrades on the left and viewed the task of democratic socialists as a kind of noble, endless, Sisyphean endeavor, which he described by invoking a German fable. In it, a dying peasant tells his sons that he has buried a treasure in their fields. "After the old man's death the sons dig everywhere in order to discover the treasure. They do not find it. But their indefatigable labor improves the soil and secures for them a comparative well-being."

"The treasure in the fable may well symbolize democracy," Michels wrote. "Democracy is a treasure which no one will ever discover by deliberate search. But in continuing our search, in laboring indefatigably to discover the undiscoverable, we shall perform a work which will have fertile results in the democratic sense."

After a rather dispiriting few months, the treasure in this case may seem impossibly remote, but one thing the Obama campaign got right was its faith in America's history of continually and fruitfully tilling the soil of democracy, struggling against odds until, at certain moments of profound progressive change, a new treasure is improbably found.

It was the possibility of such a democratic unearthing that gave Obama for America its moral force. The most inspiring thing about the campaign had nothing to do with the candidate and everything to do with average citizens from Dubuque to Atlanta who were taking the time and energy to search for a small piece of that treasure. Likewise, the message of the Obama campaign was as much about empowerment, reinvigorating democracy and changing the ways of Washington as it was about the central planks of his agenda. It's for this reason that the greatest disappointment of his first year is the White House's abandonment of this small-d democratic impulse in favor of a strategy almost wholly focused on insider politics.

What the country needs more than higher growth and lower unemployment, greater income equality, a new energy economy and drastically reduced carbon emissions is a redistribution of power, a society-wide epidemic of re-democratization. The crucial moments of American reform and progress have achieved this: from the direct election of senators to the National Labor Relations Act, from the breakup of the trusts to the end of Jim Crow.

So in this new year, while the White House focuses on playing within the existing rules, it's our job as citizens and activists to press constantly for changes to those rules: public financing, an end to thea filibuster, the breakup of the banks, legalization for undocumented workers and the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, to name just a few of the measures that would alter the balance of power and expand the frontiers of the possible.

If I had to bet, I'd say that not of one of these will be won this year. The White House won't be of much help, and on some issues, like breaking up the banks, it will represent the opposition. Always searching and never quite finding is grueling and often dispiriting work. But there is simply no alternative other than to give in and let the field turn hard and barren.

Christopher Hayes is The Nation's Washington editor.

Citizen's Arrest of War Criminals Tony Blair and George W. Bush

2010-02-03T10:40:00.001-08:00

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17350

Citizen's Arrest of War Criminals Tony Blair and George W. Bush
By Prof. Anthony J. Hall
Global Research, February 2, 2010

Professor Boyle's intervention with the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute the Bush War Cabinet for international crimes is welcome news. Professor Boyle's meticulously documented charges come shortly after news of a reward being set up in Great Britain for those who attempt citizens' arrests of crebibly accused war criminal, Tony Blair.

http://www.arrestblair.org/

All over the world, citizens are mobilizing to take action to demand accountability from those who have been committing with impunity the highest order of international crime. About a year ago I joined this global movement. At an invited presentation hosted by the Sociology Department at the University of Winnipeg in March of 2009, I proposed that George W. Bush should be arrested during his forthcoming speaking engagement in Calgary Alberta. I began the paper by criticizing the ICC for focusing all its attention on prosecuting African war lords while ignoring the blatent criminality being displayed at the highest levels of the feeding chain of military, political and economic power. The presentation went more of less viral on the Internet.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article159233.html#article159233

Professor Boyle's intervention significantly increases the pressure that some of us have being trying to place on the ICC to enforce international criminal law against credibly accused war criminals in not only in Africa, but also in North America, Europe and Israel.

When I first presented these ideas at the University of Winnipeg, my host, Professor Heidi Rimke, and I were confronted by an organized group who surrounded us after my presentation and tried to associate my words with Nazi symbols. This surprising tactic spoke to me of the desperation and intellectual bankruptcy of the lobby seeking to prevent a real discussion of these vital matters strictly on their merits. Fortunately, there was a fairly strong reaction in Winnipeg and beyond that drew attention to the inappropriateness, to say the least, of such tactics to divert attention away from the need to address the culture of impunity that is permitting state-sponsored terror to proliferate in the name of the fraudulent Global War on Terror. As Professor Boyle indicates, this pattern of war crimes at the top is continuing and even accelerating during the presidency of Barack Obama.

http://www.911blogger.com/node/19897
http://uniter.ca/view/discuss/734/

As important as it is to show support for US and British-based initiatives to enforce the rule of law on the highest order of criminality, I humbly suggest that Canadians might want to get involved in similar initiatives unfolding in Canada. When George W. Bush came to Calgary, law enforcement officials ignored my efforts along with those of Lawyers Against War to provide them with evidence that the former US president had violated international law as well as the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

When it became apparent that police would not adhere to the Nuremberg Principles by arresting Bush, my friend and colleague, Splitting The Sky, attempted a citizen's arrest.

An Attica Brother and Mohawk activist, Splitting The Sky had come to Calgary carrying a letter from his lawyer, the former US Attorney-General Ramsay Clark, outlining the case why the former US president should be arrested. We held a press conference the day before Bush's visit to inform the media of the existence of that letter.

Instead of arresting Bush the police arrested Splitting The Sky. The authorities jailed him and and charged the Mohawk activist with obstructing justice. STS's trial is scheduled to take place in Calgary Alberta in early March of 2010, which as I write these words is only about five weeks away. The local media, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, has covered up the arrest and the circumstances behind it right up to this day. I lodged a formal complaint with the Ombudsman of the CBC, Vince Carlin, complaining about the public broadcaster's biased and unprofessional coverage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62a53enMtA0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIj9wGZyWM8
http://www.splittingthesky.net/
http://www.warcriminalsout.com/prof_hall_letter_to_cbc_ombudsman.html

Since the arrest of STS former US Congresswoman, Green Party presidential candidate and international anti-war activist, Cynthia McKinney, has been outspoken in calling attention to the importance of the STS-Bush case. Last November, for instance, Ms. McKinney addressed an international conference entitled "Criminalizing War" at Kuala Lumpur. Standing on the podium beside British MP, George Galloway, Ms. McKinney drew attention to the Canadian proceedings that she placed in the context of the history of COINTELPRO dirty tricks aimed at destroying the American Indian Movement

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/47554

I have continued the agenda that Splitting The Sky and I started after he telephoned me about one year ago to inform me that George W.Bush was coming to Calgary in his first public speaking engagement following his presidency.

http://blip.tv/file/3015093
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16377

Along with Splitting The Sky, I attended the Bush-Clinton speaking event in Toronto. I wrote about that episode in a widely disseminated article that appeared on many web sites, including that of Paul S. Graham of the Winnipeg Peace Alliance.

http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/paul-s-graham/10d849dd7b02445aaec5a...

Unlike the United States, Canada is a member of the International Criminal Court. If the government of Canada truly respected the jurisdiction and mission of this new and still untested court, it would have made sure that credibly accused war criminals George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and other members of the Bush War Cabinet were arrested when they have touched down on Canadian soil during previous months. But given the present composition of the Canadian government, there is no chance that it will respect international criminal laws that some of its own members, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper, could and should be accused of violating.

Moreover all of those police officers who failed to arrest George Bush when they were presented with the possibility of doing so became complicit in violations of international law, including the Nuremberg Principles. Following orders does not provide a legitimate defense for officials who fail to uphold the rule of law when it comes to the responsibility of dealing with the highest order of international crime. Again and again we see evidence that the rule of law does not apply to those at the top of military, corporate, political and financial chains of command. Under these circumstances the idea that we live in societies governed by the rule of law has become a sad hoax.

The severity of the dangers that surround us as the 9/11 Wars continue kill and maim millions and on the frontiers of empire and to subvert our governments and societies here in the imperial heartlands of North America, Europe, Japan and Australasia has been well explained by Professor Boyle as well as by Canadian professors Peter Dale Scott, John McMurtry, Graeme MacQueen, Michael Keefer, and Michel Chossudovsky among others. Yesterday Professor Scott's most recent observations on the lawlessness that permeates the highest levels of our governments was published at

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17300

Founder of the Peace Studies Centre and the Peace Studies program at McMaster University, Professor MacQueen, has added his voice to the mix. He has emphasized the importance for the peace movement of understanding "fraudulent trigger incidents." Prof. MacQueen argues that key elements of the peace movement have gone astray. He accuses some of his fellow activists of refusing to research the case being developed of one of the world's most vital and determined movements of civil society and falling back on uncritical acceptance of what he calls the "government explanation" of the 9/11 Wars. See

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUISz8Uwh6A
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY9IlDDpvzc
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3Bte5ULPD8
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCzHeCCDp74&feature=related

Not A Polite Debate: Confronting John Yoo in San Francisco

2010-02-02T13:51:00.000-08:00

Evil must be confronted by groups!!!

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202302-Not-A-Polite-Debate-Confronting-John-Yoo-in-San-Francisco

The World Can't Wait
Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:10 EST
By the San Francisco chapter of World Can't Wait

"Torture...is not a polite debate.
Torture is a crime against humanity.
Torture isn't just a war crime.
Torture is an abomination and a crystallization of everything John Yoo stands for...
It is your responsibility here to not sit politely while John Yoo speaks." - protester, January 27, Commonwealth Club San Francisco

Wednesday night, January 27, "Torture Memos" author John Yoo was confronted by about two dozen protesters at the San Francisco stop of his national book tour for Crisis and Command.

OpEdNews Talks with Gigi Pomerantz, founder of YOUTHAITI

2010-02-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/OpEdNews-Talks-with-Gigi-P-by-Joan-Brunwasser-100128-334.html

January 28, 2010
By Joan Brunwasser

Welcome to OpEdNews, Gigi. The spotlight has been on Haiti since their horrific earthquake January 12th. You have been involved over there since way before this catastrophe. Tell us about that.

Gigi in Duchity last September

Hi, Joan. I first went to Haiti in February, 2006, on a medical mission with a Catholic church group out of Naperville, IL. I am a Nurse Practitioner and have always been interested in going on a developing world mission; this was the first time. I had no idea what to expect, other than it would change me somehow; I had no idea how much!

After seeing the devastating effects of lack of prevention, lack of sanitation and clean water, as a Nurse Practitioner, I wanted to do something different than just a medical mission. I read about this method of sanitation in a book published by the Hesperian Foundation called Sanitation and Cleanliness for a Healthy Environment. I began conversations (in French) with some local people in this rural mountain village where we served, and we decided to try to build a composting toilet.

There are some other folks in Haiti doing similar work, and we hooked up with them to learn about what they were doing. Then, we got started! Over the past four years, we have built a youth organization in this village, that is reaching out far beyond its own borders, and a non-profit organization based in Milwaukee to fund the work. We have built five public dry-composting toilets and 60 household Arborloos. We have begun a program of hygiene education in schools, the market place and with village groups, and engaged a local agronomist to teach sustainable farming methods and establish gardens near our toilets.

Talk about starting from the bottom up. I want to know more about the youth organization that you built.

When I first thought of doing some work in the village, I knew that I couldn't do it alone. I asked the parish priest to recommend someone to work with. He directed me to Franci Polyte, an up-and-coming young leader in the community. Franci then put together a group of youth aged 15 - 30, mostly high school students and teachers to help launch a project to build a toilet. We started with 25 youths, and now have almost 70 from this one village. They have raised the age requirement to 18, and when kids turn 18, they call me and ask to join! I tell them, "Talk to Franci!"

With Marcorel Lisius, YOUTHAITI's in-country coordinator, Aug 2009
The youth do all kinds of things in the village from helping to build toilets, to cleaning the streets, to organizing cultural events and soccer tournaments. We rent a house in the center of the village where they come and hang out. We dream of putting in a cyber-cafe there, where they can stay in touch with family and friends far away.

And, they all call me "Mom"!

So, "Mom", how are those kids doing now? Have you heard from any of them since the 'quake?

Duchity was not directly affected by the quake, as it is more than six hours away on a "good" day. But, the village is devastated; everyone has family in Port-au-Prince. Everyone knows someone who has died. I spoke with the director of an orphanage who asked me to call Port-au-Prince (PAP) for the school principal (no phone card or no connection) to locate his children. Then, I had to tell him that two of his daughters were lost, and they were not able to recover the body of one. He traveled the next morning by motorcycle to try to find her and also to bring all his children back to Duchity.

Franci said over 500 people have returned "with only their two hands and the clothes on their backs." Families are stretched thin to feed and clothe them - but everyone is trying. We have begun to take displaced people into our house. [This is the house YOUTHAITI rents in Duchity for the youth group, and we stay there when we visit. It has three small rooms and a latrine in back. We can fit 10 or 12 people in the bedrooms and around a table.]

We plan to provide food as people stay or pass through. We will help with resettling and hopefully get people planting and doing agriculture again. Our agronomist is developing a plan for increased garden production using urine from our composting toilets.

Selecting site for Arborloo
Money donated goes directly to the people for food and urgent needs. Then, we will go in and start to work on jobs and long-term solutions, driven by what our Haitian partners tell us.

I hear almost daily from someone in Haiti - from PAP, Duchity, from people wandering away from PAP. Sometimes, they just want to hear my voice, other times to tell me some news. Thankfully, no one I know directly has been lost.

One man, Jean Emy Elize, is an artist. He had just brought all the artwork from the collective of 16 artists in Duchity to open a small studio in Port-au-Prince to sell. He spent his money on rent, thinking he would sell some work and be able to continue to pay. The next day, the earthquake took it all away from him: his life's savings, his life's work, and at least four of his closest friends.

What do you recommend for people who would like to help?

At this point in time, cash donations are the most important - to keep emergency supplies flowing, even through small organizations such as ours. Every day, I am sending cash to people on the ground in Haiti to buy food and help people get around. It also assures that we, as an organization, can continue doing the important work of development, in spite of the massive destruction. It's even more important now to provide adequate sanitation and teach people to resume making a living from the earth.

However, as we move forward, donations of other goods may also be important. I am currently in conversation with someone about a possible shipping program - and if it comes to fruition we will seek not just the "usual" clothing etc., but donations of cars, motorcycles, generators, solar panels, earth moving equipment, etc. Anyone with connections in these areas, or who can help us to ship things to Haiti, should contact me at gigi@youthaiti.org.

Also, I think it is important for people to visit and volunteer in Haiti. Right now, very specialized skills are needed for emergency recovery. By this summer, however, volunteers who work with children, who want to work in reconstruction or building toilets and gardens, will be needed and welcomed. You must be prepared to "rough it", as most of the nice hotels are now gone. Food supplies are limited. But the rewards you will experience cannot be measured.

How often have you been back and forth since that first trip four years ago, Gigi? And, do you plan to go again in the near future?

I've been to Haiti eight times, including taking a leave of absence from my job last summer to be there all of August and September. I purchased some property in the village of Duchity, in the mountains of Grand'Anse, and hope to build a house there some day.

I speak (almost) fluent Creole and am in touch multiple times a day with my friends and adopted family. I have two god-children - one in Port-au-Prince and one in Duchity.

I am going back February 13th for 10 days. Although I am really afraid it will be too hard to leave... I have ordered three boxes of what is called a MAP pack - they are thousands of dollars of medications that you get for just $500 a pack - in order to be able to help out in the best way possible. I have heard that the amount of infection is already on the rise.

I have a loose plan for this trip, but it could change. I will post to my newsletter (interested readers are welcome to subscribe*), so you will be able to follow my travels.

Anything you'd like to add, Gigi?

Haiti is a country with a rich history. It's the first free black republic in the world, and the second free republic in the Western Hemisphere, founded by slaves who overthrew the shackles of bondage. As a Jew, I have a very deep connection to the Haitian people.

As a result of political isolation in their early years (no country would recognize them because they had been slaves), an onerous debt burden applied by the French to buy back their freedom, invasion by the US in sympathy with the French - they have suffered extreme poverty and environmental degradation. But the Haitian people are a warm, loving, industrious people. Hard working and intelligent, even though uneducated. I believe they deserve our support to help them establish the kind of country they have always dreamed of.

I am ready to partner with them. Are you?

You're doing great work over there, Gigi. Thanks for talking with me. Good luck to you, your project, and the people of Haiti.

*contact Gigi at gigi@youthaiti.org and www.youthaiti.org

Taxing the Rich Wins in Oregon

2010-02-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Taxing-the-Rich-Wins-in-Or-by-shamus-cooke-100127-932.html

January 29, 2010
By shamus cooke

Victory! Thousands of Oregon workers fought valiantly over the past weeks to ensure that corporations and the rich will see their taxes raised, so that social services, health care, and education could be saved. Massive phone banking operations, door-to-door canvassing, and rallies were used by union and community members to educate the public about a progressive tax measure used to offset the state's dire budget situation.

The campaign was indisputably class war, and the corporations came out firing -- virtually every newspaper in Oregon shed their alleged "objectivity" and exposed their subservience to the corporations. Oregon's largest newspaper, The Oregonian, displayed giant front page ads --daily -- in order to defeat the measures (part of the ad showcased an article by Phil Knight --founder of Oregon company Nike -- who spoke of corporate apocalypse if the tax measures passed). This, along with the countless false advertisements on TV and radio, shows the high level of understanding that workers in Oregon displayed in voting to pass the measures by a landslide.

The new taxes are hardly radical; if anything they are insufficient compared to Oregon's budget problems. Oregon's corporate minimum tax was raised from $10 a year -- no typo here -- to $150. Corporations with profits over $250,000 a year will pay an additional 1.3 percent on profits over that amount.

Wealthy individuals -- those making over $125,000 or couples making $250,000 will pay an additional 1.8 percent above those numbers. Most Oregonians -- 97.5 percent -- will see no tax increase. These minuscule tax increases caused Oregon's corporate elite to feverishly organize to defeat the bill. Their stranglehold over the media was no match for well-organized working-class Oregonians.

Originally, the tax increase was passed by Oregon's legislature, where the Democrats enjoy a supermajority. The Democrats were under immense pressure from Oregon's unions, who, commendably, advanced the "tax the rich" measure to the point where the Democrats had to act. Though the tax increases were small, they were nevertheless progressive, saving Oregon's budget $733 million in cuts.

The corporations mobilized, and paid signature gatherers to collect enough signatures to put the tax increase to a voter referendum.

The ensuing campaign caught the attention of the nation, where precedent is now set in favor of all working people. Corporations and unions from out of state contributed funds to help sway Oregon's campaign, knowing that their fates were linked. Now, Oregon will hopefully serve as an example to other states experiencing budget crises and consequent cuts to education and social services.

Oregon's vote coincides with President Obama's national budget, where social services are being "frozen" -- in reality reduced. Thus, Oregon gives inspiration for solutions to state and federal budget crises, where in both cases the working class has been carrying the brunt of the recession's effects.

Union and community groups everywhere must follow Oregon's example. Tax the rich and the corporations! No to cuts in education, health care, and social services!

Why political action is not working and what to do about it

2010-02-02T12:50:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-political-action-is-no-by-Chaz-Valenza-100128-675.html

January 28, 2010
Why political action is not working and what to do about it
By Chaz Valenza

Our government is not yet Fascist. To use this term is hyperbole and counter productive.

Calling our current system of governance what it is -- a Corporatocracy -- is powerful because it is a label that precisely defines our current state of affairs.

The term Corporatocracy is simple and descriptive: a form of government controlled by powerful corporations with a veneer of democracy.

Simply put, the wall between our economic system and our form of government has been lowered to the point where money and corporations now have control of our government. We no longer have either a democracy or free markets as market rules are now created by the corporations they are meant to control.

Corporatocracy is its own animal. Once in power this perversion cannot be defeated through democratic means as it has control of the roots of government. This is an important point.

As we have witnessed, petitions, letter writing, emails, phone calls and even our votes are worth so little they are now ineffective.

Voicing opposition by blogging and moaning and commenting on opinion pieces in main stream media has become populous busy work that humors corporate powers who laugh all the way to the bank.

Our representatives barely acknowledge the will of the people, placate majority opinion with half, quarter or obfuscating measures. They cut divergent backroom deals, or overturn fairness and justice publicly with impunity.

Evidence that every branch of our Federal government has been corrupted is now cited frequently. The instances grow more egregious daily:

The Supreme Court: Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.

The Congress: Health Care Reform hijacked by mega insurance, medical and pharmaceutical corporations.

The Executive Branch: Federal Reserve and Treasury Department appointments with direct connections, and a documented history of cronyism and criminal activity, with the largest Wall Street firms.

Get used to it. Say it aloud a few times and let those "poor" and "rat" and "tock" syllables roll off your tongue. Corp-poor-rat-tock-racey. Poor, the vast majority of us. Rats, we know who they are. Tock, like tick tock, doing time not really living.

If you worked for or supported the election campaign of Barack Obama, you learned a valuable lesson. Money talks.

Labyrinth - A new strategy to get at the enemy.

This was a lesson we learned in the W. years when we saw the impact of a small lie, and a lot of cash, used effectively by the Swift Boaters.

You and millions of others like you, including me, bought the election with our small contributions.

We may have purchased Mr. Obama the Presidency; unfortunately those with real money, the mega corporate money, had already purchased him and all of the apparatus of government around him.

If the President is sincerely fighting for change, as he would have us believe in his rhetorically ingenious State of the Union Address, he faces formidable foes on both sides of the aisle.

An army of lobbyists, and an Everest of corporate money, will continue to barricade themselves in a closed marketplace, while they erect a labyrinth of laws to assure obscene profits and a workforce of serfs.

Many voices are calling for radical change. They are not mistaken in proposing drastic remedies to dismantle the Corporatocracy. These include amending the Constitution to deprive corporations of their falsely assumed personhood, impeachment efforts against members of the Supreme Court, and the abolition of the Federal Reserve.

Each voice seems to have its own pet yearning to bring down some or other major establishment pillar that will yield a balance between people and self interested organizations, between individuals and the currently "legal" criminal enterprises that rule the day.

How can we ever reach the tipping point and challenge the balance of power? Can it be done legally, without government over-throw and treason?

I believe the answer is yes, but it will not be accomplished without effort and sacrifice on the part of We the People.

Though political action should not necessarily be abandoned, the recognition that it lacks efficacy is prerequisite to accepting an alternative strategy.

The alternative is market-based protest and insurrection. Money talks; who it speaks to, and how loud, is up to us.

Each day we are bombarded with appeals from well-meaning entities that are alternatives to corporate sponsored communications and political influence. When we can afford to make them, contributions to these efforts are important, but only as a starting point.

Several movements in their infancy are means to an end that have the potential of being very effective as thousands, then millions of people take part. They include:

Move Your Money: http://moveyourmoney.info/ Yes, just move your money from a big bank to a local community bank. But don't be surprised to see your community bank fail and be taken over by Big Banking once again. If that should happen you'll be insured by the FDIC. Move your money again.

Use Cash Movement: http://UseCashMovement.org Big Bank and Big Credit Card companies make a fortune whenever you use plastic, debit and credit cards, instead of cash. Both customers and small business can turn this around, promote the use of cash and benefit while Big Banking suffers.

Sell Stocks: I don't believe any retail/small investor, those without connections to inside Wall Street, has any business investing in stock. Yes, the market has come back, the big boys say it's safe to go back in the water. Believe them at your own peril or find a safe haven for your hard earned retirement money and register your opposition by pulling your money out. A sacrifice to give Wall Street the finger, or a smart move? Maybe both.

Boycott Corporations: Everyday we all interact with corporations we hate doing business with for any number of reasons. Operating in today's world, you may not have a choice on some of these matters. But it is always worth questioning authority. Is there an alternative? Can a spend less with these corporations? Do I need their services at all?

The State Authority and Anti-Racketeering Act

2010-02-02T10:57:00.000-08:00

All states need to stand up to the federal government so they can retain their power. Otherwise, it's a full oligarchy!

http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2010/01/31/state-authority-and-anti-racketeering-act/

ResistDC: The State Authority and Anti-Racketeering Act
31. JAN, 2010 COMMENTS (15)
by Michael Boldin

Often, supporters of the 10th Amendment movement that’s been growing around the country say – “I love all the discussion and the resolutions in support of the 10th amendment, but where’s the enforcement? These actions need some teeth!.”

If teeth is what you want, you need to go no further than Georgia. House Bill 880 (HB880), introduced by Representative Bobby Franklin, is called the “State Authority and Anti-racketeering Act.”

Unlike the many 10th Amendment Resolutions that have been introduced around the country since 2008, HB880 is legally-binding legislation.

LIMITED: THE PROPER ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

Federal violations of the Constitution go far beyond anything the founders and ratifiers would have accepted.

James Madison, explaining the constitution, in Federalist Paper 45, said, “The powers delegated … to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.”

Thomas Jefferson emphasized that the states are not “subordinate” to the national government, but rather the two are “coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. … The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.”

The founders made quite clear that a vast majority of powers would remain in the states. If passed, this principle would be codified in state law by HB880:

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees to the states and the people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the Constitution and not prohibited by the Constitution

and

The State of Georgia hereby reclaims authority under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the states in the Constitution of the United States.

NULLIFICATION

The principles behind such legislation is nullification, which garnered first serious attention with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798.

When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned.

All across the country, activists and state-legislators are pressing for similar legislation, to nullify specific federal laws within their states.

A proposed Constitutional Amendment to effectively ban national health care will go to a vote in Arizona in 2010. Fourteen states now have some form of medical marijuana laws – in direct contravention to federal laws which state that the plant is illegal in all circumstances. And, massive state nullification of the 2005 Real ID Act has rendered the law nearly void.

But nullification is much more than a mere rhetorical statement issued by a state legislature. At its very core, it’s mass civil disobedience to the federal government by the people of a state with the backing of the state government.

INTERPOSITION

In the Virginia Resolution of 1798, James Madison wrote of the principle of interposition:

That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.

Here Madison asserts what is implied in nullification laws – that state governments not only have the right to resist unconstitutional federal acts, but that, in order to protect liberty, they are “duty bound to interpose” or stand between the federal government and the people of the state.

House Bill 880 includes strong language to assert this principle:

Any actions taken by the federal government through its agents or employees that are not authorized by the Constitution of the United States are unlawful; and being unlawful, they are criminal offenses against the affected parties

This bill would make it a crime – with imprisonment for up to 30 years for each offense – for “any judicial officer, law enforcement officer, agent, or employee of the federal government, any multinational government, any international government, or any global government” to attempt to “enforce any federal, multinational, international, or global law” reserved to the State of Georgia under the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.

As of this writing, the bill has had two readings in the Georgia House.
Will such a strong piece of legislation go anywhere? Only time will tell. The reality, though, is this – it’s going to take some serious effort to push back against decades and decades of unconstitutional federal acts.

CLICK HERE to view the Tenth Amendment Center’s 10th Amendment Bills Tracking Page

Michael Boldin is the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center

Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

We, The People, Call For Total National Strike April 15-18

2010-02-01T17:30:00.001-08:00

http://www.rense.com/general89/tax.htm

We, The People, Call For Total National Strike April 15-18
From Karen
TaxFree15.com
1-31-10

The spark of Freedom is igniting within the hearts and minds of the people in America, as well as globally, and we all have the moral obligation to fan the flames. The time for taking our freedom for granted has passed.

It is now time to stand for freedom individually and collectively, and make the sacrifices necessary in order to reclaim it. But it is easier than most of us know.

There are only 3 things we need in order to ensure success. We must be Pro-Active, Non Violent, and Massive in numbers. There are over 300 million of us, here, in this country, trying to survive under corporate fascism. It is time to stop the so-called "Wheels of Progress" from crushing our lives and our planet.

Those of us who realize just how much peril our country, our lands, our homes, our children, our descendants, and our future are in, need now to come together in peaceful, proactive non-compliance. The system is dependent upon our cooperation, and thrives on it daily. Those of us who know where we're headed, have a duty to defend our families and our freedoms, but we no longer have to die in order to do that. This time we use our numbers, and we use brains, not bullets.

This time we participate in "Peaceful Evolution, Revolutionary Thoughts, and the Resolution to see it through". This time we stand as one. No longer will we support a corporate agenda that is able to take our money because their privately owned media misrepresents the news and lies to us in order to keep us in the dark. They exploit our ignorance, making it more and more difficult to find the truth, because they realize that if we knew what their real agenda was, we'd stop it immediately.

"You can fool some of the people all of the time; and those are the ones you have to concentrate on." -- George W. Bush "If the American people knew what we have done, they would string us up from the lamp posts." ---George H.W. Bush "There's three things to remember: claim everything, explain nothing, deny everything."--Prescott Bush, father to H.W. Bush Those are some mind blowing quotes, but it's not just about the Republicans, or the current administration. This is way beyond party lines, religions, or labels. This is about freedom or tyranny, and more and more of us are learning that every day. No longer are we content to hand our power over and believe talking figureheads who refuse to tell us just exactly where our money is going, while AIG and Goldman Sachs make billions in bonuses and expect us to foot the bill for their Wall Street gambling casino games. This is another great wall that must fall.

No more will we submit to or pay politicians who steal our money while ignoring our wishes.

No more are we willing to allow our individual freedoms and personal rights to be trampled by this out of control, "Government gone Wild", who utilize our own military and police force against us, while partying with our money at an event we're not invited to.

No longer will we submit to "Rule of Law" and U.N. troops who are called "Peace keepers", but are actually foreign troops occupying our land and confronting citizens. We will collectively refuse to place ourselves in harms way, and go about the business of living our lives and becoming as self-sufficient as possible. We will fortify ourselves within our homes and communities, and look to our local county sheriffs for protection against this out of control monopoly.

Those of us who are in the military or police force must honor the oaths that were taken when we chose our positions. We will defend our Constitution against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic. No more ignoring our Constitution & illegal Patriot Act mandates. "We the People" are taking our power back, first individually, then collectively, as we stand for freedom by totally and peacefully withdrawing our support from the government corporation that sold us out generations ago.

"WE The PEOPLE" ARE PUTTING OUR SO-CALLED LEADERS ON NOTICE "WE THE PEOPLE" ARE CALLING FOR A NATIONAL STRIKE APRIL 15 - 18TH "WE THE PEOPLE" ARE WITHDRAWING OUR MONEY FROM YOUR INSTITUTIONS and supporting ourselves and our communities because you've refused to do that!

"WE THE PEOPLE" ARE SIGNING THE LEGAL PETITIONS OF REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES found at www.GiveMeLiberty.org and YOU WILL BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

"WE THE PEOPLE" ARE STAYING HOME WITH OUR FAMILIES FOR 4 DAYS AND SENDING A MESSAGE TO THE DOMINANT CRIMINAL MINORITY WHO HOLD OUR CONSTITUTION HOSTAGE...YOU WORK FOR US!

RESTORE AND UPHOLD OUR CONSTITUTION! If you are unable to do that....... YOU ARE FIRED! "WE THE PEOPLE" DEMAND YOU ADDRESS OUR PETITIONS OF GRIEVANCES

"WE THE PEOPLE" SAY NO MORE TO A BILLION DOLLARS A WEEK SPENT ON WAR!

"WE THE PEOPLE" DEMAND CLEAN AIR, CLEAN WATER, HEALTHY FOOD, SELF-SUFFICIENT COMMUNITIES AND INTEGRITY, FROM OURSELVES, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY FROM OUR LEADERS.

"WE THE PEOPLE" REFUSE TO SUBMIT TO TRYANNY OR GLOBAL GOVERNMENT

"WE THE PEOPLE" ARE SPEAKING AS ONE AND WE SAY "NO MORE"

"WE THE PEOPLE" HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF ILLEGAL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL, CORPORATE, FASCIST GOVERNMENT

HEAR US NOW, OR GET READY FOR A LARGER, LONGER STRIKE UNTIL YOU DO.

HEAR US NOW, OR YOUR TIME IS OVER

THE TIME OF THE PEOPLE HAS BEGUN

"WE THE PEOPLE" A FREE PEOPLE, UNITED IN THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM WILL WITHOLD OUR SUPPORT UNTIL YOU HONOR OUR DEMANDS

POWER TO THE PEOPLE THROUGH PEACEFUL UNITY

WWW.TAXFREE15.COM

JOIN US! STAND FOR FREEDOM! Weekly Conference Calls: Saturday mornings, 9 am Pacific 712-775-7200 Access code 431669#

LET THE MESSAGE OF FREEDOM RING LOUDLY ALL ACROSS AMERICA AND THEN RESONATE LOUDLY THROUGHOUT THE WORLD!

10 Ways to Stop Corporate Dominance of Politics

2010-01-30T13:46:00.000-08:00

By Fran Korten, YES! Magazine
January 28, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145441/

The recent Supreme Court decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in politics just may be the straw that breaks the plutocracy’s back.

Pro-democracy groups, business leaders, and elected representatives are proposing mechanisms to prevent or counter the millions of dollars that corporations can now draw from their treasuries to push for government action favorable to their bottom line. The outrage ignited by the Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission extends to President Obama, who has promised that repairing the damage will be a priority for his administration.

But what can be done to limit or reverse the effect of the Court’s decision? Here are 10 ideas:

Amend the U.S. Constitution to declare that corporations are not persons and do not have the rights of human beings. Since the First Amendment case for corporate spending as a free speech right rests on corporations being considered “persons,” the proposed amendment would strike at the core of the ruling’s justification. The push for the 28th Amendment is coming from the grassroots, where a prairie fire is catching on from groups such as Public Citizen, Voter Action, and the Campaign to Legalize Democracy.

Require shareholders to approve political spending by their corporations. Public Citizen and the Brennan Center for Justice are among the groups advocating this measure, and some members of Congress appear interested. Britain has required such shareholder approval since 2000.

Pass the Fair Elections Now Act, which provides federal financing for Congressional elections. This measure has the backing of organizations representing millions of Americans, including Moveon.org, the NAACP, the Service Employees International Union, and the League of Young Voters. Interestingly, the heads of a number of major corporations have also signed on, including those of Ben & Jerry’s, Hasbro, Crate & Barrel, and the former head of Delta Airlines.

Give qualified candidates equal amounts of free broadcast air time for political messages. This would limit the advantages of paid advertisements in reaching the public through television where most political spending goes.

Ban political advertising by corporations that receive government money, hire lobbyists, or collect most of their revenue abroad. A fear that many observers have noted is that the Court’s ruling will allow foreign corporations to influence U.S. elections. According to The New York Times, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) are exploring this option.

Impose a 500 percent excise tax on corporate contributions to political committees and on corporate expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) proposes this, calling it "The Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act."

Prohibit companies from trading their stock on national exchanges if they make political contributions and expenditures.

Another one from Grayson, which he calls "The Public Company Responsibility Act."

Require publicly traded companies to disclose in SEC filings money used for the purpose of influencing public opinion, rather than for promoting their products. Grayson calls this "The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act."

Require the corporate CEO to appear as sponsor of commercials that his or her company pays for, another possibility from the Schumer-Van Hollen team, according to The New York Times.

Publicize the reform options, inform the public of who is making contributions to whom, and activate the citizenry. If we are to safeguard our democracy, media must inform and citizens must act.

The measures listed above—and others that seek to reverse the dominance of money in our political system—will not be easy. But grassroots anger at this latest win for corporate power is running high. History shows that when the public is sufficiently aroused, actions that once seemed impossible can, in hindsight, seem inevitable.

Fran Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Fran is publisher of YES! Magazine.

How The American People Can Defeat Unlimited Corporate Money and Influence in Elections

2010-01-30T05:24:00.002-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-The-American-People-Ca-by-Kathleen-Wynne-Wi-100127-930.html

January 27, 2010
By Kathleen Wynne (With Contributions by Karen Renick)

"There is a dangerous, misguided movement out there that if we just let business rule the nation, all will be well -- markets will take care of themselves, health care, jobs, just let business handle it. You know who says that the loudest? Business. And now, it can say it even louder. It can shout down any candidate who opposes it. What happened to "of the people, by the people, for the people'?"

(Excerpt from "Big Biz Needed No Help In The Election Game", by Mitch Albom, columnist, Detroit Free Press, click here)

The country is rightfully reeling from the recent U.S. Supreme Court's partisan 5/4 decision this past Thursday ruling that the "government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections." This decision, without question, continues the devastation of the power of the people in the elections process by ruling that corporations are "persons" who have a First Amendment Right to make campaign contributions without any kind of restriction.

What average citizen can compete with the lobbyists who already have overwhelming influence on our representatives, as well as compete with the deep pocket campaign contributions of our fellow "persons", Big Business? Campaigns have already become "marketing" campaigns designed to sell a brand or personality more than be a campaign of ideas among the candidates. The American people already know that unlimited ability by a corporation to make campaign contributions to a certain candidate will surely undermine the "checks and balances" that our Founders intended for the elections process which were meant to be the sovereign province of "we, the people", not "we, the corporations."

The initial devastation of the essential balance of power between citizens and big business at the ballot box was the advent of voting machines in the elections process. These machines make it impossible for any citizen to oversee the counting of their votes due to the hidden counting by the voting software that runs the machines. Secret vote counting combined with the Court's most recent decision has rendered a citizen's role in the elections process virtually non-existent, which is tantamount to not having an election at all. How is this good for democracy?

Not surprisingly, citizens of all political persuasions are already protesting the Court's decision because they can so clearly see the impending danger to the People's role in elections and understand that the kind of money that corporations will use now to influence elections will most assuredly diminish, if not totally destroy, our freedom and way of life. In stark contrast, it has been so incredibly difficult for citizens to readily grasp that our right to control and visually witness the entire process of voting to know for certain that the persons truly chosen by the people have been elected has been stolen from us by government officials who cleverly convinced us to replace the ballot box of old with the way of the future -- computerized voting.

For years, election integrity advocates have compiled a mountain of evidence against the use of these machines to no avail. The voting machine corporations have spent large sums of money on lobbyists and marketing these machines and have far too much support from politicians, election officials, computer security experts and powerful interest groups intent on keeping these machines an integral part of our elections process. They are marketed as "faster, easier and more secure!" Is democracy preserved when voting is allowed to be marketed as "fast and easy" rather than "public and accurate"? Despite investigations that definitively uncovered the truth about the dangers these machines pose to election integrity, which were featured in the Emmy nominated HBO documentary film, Hacking Democracy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVlZTWH7u8w), our government is determined to maintain the current status quo.

It is important to note that American election integrity advocates haven't been the only ones protesting the use of electronic voting machines counting their votes in secret. Citizens of other democratic republics, such as, Ireland, The Netherlands and India, are but a few of the growing number of countries that have either banned e-voting or are presently fighting to ban them and demanding a return to hand counts and the kind of voting every citizen can oversee and understand. The most recent has been Germany.

In March 2009, Germany banned e-voting because two German citizens, Dr. Ulrich Wiesner and his father, Joachim Wiesner, filed a lawsuit declaring e-voting "unconstitutional" under the German Constitution (which, by the way, the final language put into their Constitution had to be approved by the U.S. after World War II). To further bolster their argument against e-voting, the Wiesners requested the help of a group of computer security experts, who were members of the Chaos Compute Club, to demonstrate for the Court technically how the voting system's counting the votes was totally unobservable by the average citizen. In response to their lawsuit and the demonstration, the German Federal Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the Wiesners. The Court even took it a step further. They also ruled that no amount of testing or government checks of any kind, such as post election audits or recounts, can substitute for public observation. Ultimately, they unanimously declared that e-voting was, indeed, unconstitutional because computerized, secret vote counting does not subscribe to the democratic standards of their country! All elections in Germany have now reverted back to the use of hand-counted paper ballots.

In direct contrast to the U.S. Supreme Court's priorities, the German Court's priorities were to guarantee a German citizen's human right, which in this case is to be able to "see" their votes counted without the need for any specialized technical expertise in order to do so. They did so to protect "principles of transparency" and the "public nature of elections" as the priority in how elections in a democratic republic must be administered. It is a great example of the German judiciary using its power the way it was intended by protecting the best interests of its citizens in one of the most important processes - elections - available to them in a democratic republic. Despite the historic nature of this decision, our mainstream media chose not to cover this story. Why not? You would think that the "greatest democracy in the world" would consider this decision by the highest court in Germany a must read by the American people, as well as by our own high court justices and government officials.

Yet, here in America, over 95% of us are forced to have a computerized voting system count our ballots because our government officials unilaterally sanctioned the control of our elections to the voting machine corporations through the passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 and have protected their software from public scrutiny by upholding trade secret laws. As a result, no one can guarantee even a single voter that his or her vote is being counted as cast.

What a disturbing and glaring difference between the German Federal Constitutional Court and our U.S. Supreme Court when it comes to asserting their power as intended -- to protect a citizen's rights above all others. The German Court banned secret vote counting in elections and the U.S. Supreme Court gave corporations unchecked influence in our elections, in alliance with our government's sanctioning of even further corporate control over our elections through the continued use of these voting machines. One Court protects the best interests of the citizens and the sanctity of their basic human rights in a democracy, the other protects the best interests of corporations.

Therefore, the most effective and pro-active action we, the People, can take in the wake of this horrendous decision by our U.S. Supreme Court is to immediately demand a return to publicly hand-counted paper ballots at the precinct level on election night and to posting the results at the precinct - before any ballots are moved - so the results can be publicly documented by citizens which will protect the integrity of the final tally at local, state and federal levels. When all is said and done, this is the only avenue left for citizens to be able to reclaim their rightful role in the election process. It will ensure that our vote our voice will be accurately heard as we bestow our consent to those we deem worthy of serving as the protectors of our rights and freedom. Our collective wisdom will see through the ruse of the corporation-backed candidates and elect those who will have the strength and courage to strike down this giant of corporatocracy and revive our quickly fading republic.

If the majority of American citizens can understand that free speech, as exemplified by the giving of financial support to candidates running for public office, should only be for people, not corporations, then it's truly not a difficult leap for these very same Americans to understand that voting should only be "for the People, of the People and by the People" too. In fact, they go hand-in-hand. The very instant that the counting is hidden from view inside a machine, then voting ceases to be a public endeavor and becomes the domain of those with the financial resources and special expertise to create, program and run the counting devices means that "they" not the People - will determine the election outcomes. This is not a prescription for democracy, but, rather, one for tyranny.

Demand hand-counted paper ballots now and we can defeat unlimited corporate money and influence, and the corporate machines that now control our elections. And so my fellow Americans, let's say it together in one voice - ELECTIONS ARE FOR PEOPLE NOT CORPORATIONS!

Contact: Kathleen Wynne (Founder HCPBnow.org and Former Associate Director of Black Box Voting.org) and Karen Renick (Founder VoteRescue.org) at: wynnekathleen@yahoo.com and karen@voterescue.org to learn more about hand counted paper ballots.

Impeach John Roberts for Lying to Congress

2010-01-30T05:24:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Impeach-John-Roberts-for-L-by-Hugh-Conrad-100126-424.html

January 28, 2010
By Hugh Conrad

Lying to Congress is forbidden by Title 18, Chapter 47, Section 1001 of the U.S. Code. It states that "whoever willfully (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation" to Congress shall be fined or imprisoned ...

When he was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee at his confirmation hearing to be Chief Justice of the United States in 2005, John G. Roberts, Jr. said that he came "before this committee with no agenda, no platform. I will approach every case with an open mind."

Roberts even used a sports metaphor to explain his role. ""Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules. They apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire."

Roberts' tenure on the court shows that he is trying to rewrite the rulebook, not apply the rules established by the Founding Fathers or the Congress. He is effectively making the laws, not determining that "everybody plays by the rules." His role has been aggressive, not "a limited role." His decisions are not predicated upon justice, but upon hardened ideology. His words in those hearings distorted what he planned to do because they were a blatant lie -- and he knew it.

Roberts' record now reflects that deception, as the late Sen. Edward Kennedy said in an American Prospect article two years ago. Kennedy wrote that Roberts effectively lied to the committee with those words and others. "As we enter the third year of the lifetime appointments of Roberts and (Samuel) Alito to the Court, it is clear that their approach to judging mocks the commitment to open-mindedness, modesty, and compassion that they professed during their confirmation hearings. President Bush had openly expressed his desire to select judges who would satisfy the most radical voices in his political base. We now know that the president got exactly what he wanted."

Majority leader Sen. Harry Reid was even more blunt last March in his assessment of Roberts' performance on the court. According to an Associated Press story, Reid said that Roberts had lied to the Senate during his confirmation hearings by pretending to be a moderate -- and that the United States "is now stuck with him as chief justice." The Majority Leader said, "Roberts didn't tell us the truth. At least (Samuel) Alito told us who he was. But we're stuck with those two young men, and we'll try to change by having some moderates in the federal courts system as time goes on-- I think that will happen."

Roberts should be impeached for lying to Congress. Roberts' deceit has angered many on the left and those in the philosophical center, along with those on the right who care for honesty and justice.

However, the American people are not "stuck" with Roberts. In fact, when an American officeholder lies to Congress, the Constitution provides a legal remedy. That person can be impeached by the House of Representatives and tried before the U.S. Senate in which Reid leads the majority (Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a sexual liaison).

The chief justice has not respected precedent as he said he would in those hearings. In fact, he has legislated from the bench as he did last week, something that he decried when discussing previous courts, like that of Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1950s and 1960s.The essence of this crime is that Roberts said that he would follow precedent, a process known as stare decisis. However, he has flouted it and has become one of the most activist justices in American History in striking down previously-established legal precedents. His actions in the aggregate now rise to the level of criminal behavior.

Stare decisis is a common-law doctrine under which courts adhere to precedent on questions of law in order to ensure certainty, consistency, and stability in the administration of justice. In last week's lamentable case entitled Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, Roberts and his right-wing allies created a new constitutional right: corporately-purchased freedom of speech. That is one of the most radical assertions in American jurisprudence, espousing a right that no jurist has stated as law in the 221 years of our jurisprudence.

Roberts' action should not have been a surprise. As legal analyst and attorney Jeffrey Tobin noted in a piece about him in last year's New Yorker entitled "No More Mr. Nice Guy," Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe said that Roberts is not even remotely close to a moderate. "The Chief Justice talks the talk of moderation while walking the walk of extreme conservatism."

Extreme conservatism is not an impeachable offense. Lying to Congress is.

It is time for the U.S. House of Representatives to draft articles of impeachment against Roberts for lying to Congress during his confirmation hearing.

Democrats should undertake this action in memory of Sen. Kennedy. The late Massachusetts senator derailed President Reagan's nomination of another right-wing extremist, Robert Bork, to the Supreme Court in 1987 by using these words: "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizen's doors in midnight raids, and children could not be taught about evolution."

This should be the message of the American people: "John Roberts' America is a land in which black Americans playing in the Super Bowl would sleep in airport terminals instead of Miami hotels because segregation is not a violation of the Constitution, a land in which child labor would be legal because outlawing it would be a violation of a corporation's First Amendment freedom of expression, a land in which only men could vote because the 19th Amendment was unconstitutional, a land in which black golfers would not be permitted to play in the Masters because segregation at a private golf course should be permitted, a land in which a corporation has individual rights but people seeking privacy against illegal intrusions by the government should be denied that right, and a land in which women will be forced once again into back-alley abortions because Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional."

No precedent is safe under Roberts.

Roberts and Alito have pledged their allegiance to the Federalist Society, a far-right organization that is just one step removed from the infamous John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan.

The U.S. Congress should charge this extremist with the crime of Lying to Congress. He should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office.

Oregonians Raise Taxes On Rich, Big Corporations to Fund Critical Services

2010-01-30T05:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/BREAKING-Oregonians-Raise-by-Bruce-Allen-Morris-100126-577.html

January 27, 2010
By Bruce Allen Morris

Today in a special election, the people of Oregon voted to pass two ballot measures on taxes. Measure 66 increases the marginal income tax rate by 1.8% on incomes over $125,000 for single individuals and married separate filers and $250,000 for heads of household and joint filers. Measure 67 raises the minimum corporate tax from $10 to $150, and created 1/10 of 1% gross revenues tax for revenues over $500,000 for businesses showing no taxable profit.

In addition to the unfair and antiquated $10 corporate minimum tax that applied regardless of the extent of gross sales, Oregon also had maintained a state individual tax system that was effectively regressive in nature. Lower and middle income Oregonians paid a higher percentage of their incomes in state and local taxes and user fees than upper income Oregonians.

I and I am sure others may have more analysis on the import of this election later. For now, spread the word that the people are willing to force big businesses and the rich to pay their fair share to preserve important government services for all of the people. And, lets be on the lookout to see what the mainstream media makes of this important election. Will they tout the voice of the people in favor of raising taxes to make them more fair and progressive? Will they cite this as evidence of a real and constructive, burgeoning populist movement afoot? Or will they just ignore it, or toss it off as the fevered impulse of a bunch of west coast socialists?

Five Supreme Court Judges Do Da Corporate Takeover Hustle, And They Must Be Stopped

2010-01-30T05:10:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Five-Supreme-Court-Judges-by-thepen-100127-257.html

January 27, 2010
Five Supreme Court Judges Do Da Corporate Takeover Hustle, And They Must Be Stopped
By thepen

This the second in a series of action alerts about the fundamental willful and pernicious errors underlying the decision by 5 agenda driven right wing judges on the Supreme Court to gut all restraints on corporate meddling in our elections. Each of these successive alerts will analyze additional derelict aspects of this shameful and truly dangerous decision, to further demonstrate why we the people must speak out and act to reverse it.

In the first alert we made the triable case (which no attorney has written us to dispute) that failing to even bother to distinguish between domestic and foreign owned corporations, and knowingly leaving America vulnerable to the latter BY their ruling, was de facto an act of treason by The Supreme Court 5.

This alert will focus on their abandonment of every prudent rule of judicial review, in favor of haste and the most extreme form of judicial activism, again with specific page number references to the opinion itself.

There are TWO critical action pages related to this, which we are asking each of our participants to submit and also pass on to everyone you know, which will send your message by fax to all your own members of Congress, and President Obama too. You do not need your own fax machine to participate, the action pages do all this for you automatically in real time.

Action Page: Corporations Are NOT The People http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1029.php

Action Page: Impeach The Supreme Court 5 http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum1030.php

The most bedrock principle of appellate review is that first an appellant must have PRESERVED the issue for appeal, by arguing and getting a ruling on the point of law from the court below, necessitating fact finding by the lower court to create a "record". Innumerable appellants since the beginning of time have had the door to review slammed in their face with the admonition that if they HAD preserved the issue then and only then could a higher court review it.

And in particular, appellate courts have traditionally been loathe to making their own findings of fact (and only in a corrective way) absent very clear error by the Court below, which is as it should be. The role of a higher court is to apply the law to the facts, and make rulings of what the LAW is, not make their own findings of fact. And this is supremely true of the Supreme Court.

So even beyond the outrageousness of the result, it is at least outrageous the way it was reached, and how that reach was justified. As justification, The Supreme Court 5 asserted that some legal emergency existed requiring a broader inquiry in this case, resurrecting a claim already ABANDONED by the appellant in the court below (opinion p. 12). Why directly overturning precedents at least 20 years old would suddenly be such an emergency they do not explain.

And when you actually read the opinion, the only pressure really on the Supreme Court was because so-called Citizens United was bound to LOSE on the case they did preserve (opinion pp. 10-11). The Supreme Court 5 wanted that party to win. This was in itself an over the top act of judicial activism. But even beyond that they were hell bent on undoing as much as 100 years of campaign finance regulation (Stevens' dissent p. 3). Even the most conservative commentators agree this is what they have in fact done.

Appellate courts have been known on occasion to comment (in no binding way) that if an appellant HAD made a particular argument they might have been receptive to it, a kind of higher court invitation for someone to bring an actual case, an actual "controversy". And then there would be a factual record in some subsequent case. But here there was no controversy on the issue on which the ruling was based, for it had already been WAIVED a priori, thereby denying the Supreme Court any jurisdiction to rule on it (Constitution Article III, Section 2, Clause 1).

But even further assuming that the Supreme Court was justified in reopening a can of worms already discarded, the appropriate procedure would have been to return the case to the lower court with instructions, what is called a "remand", and which is done all the time after a ruling of LAW, for the court below to make findings of fact and conduct further proceedings, so that there would be a factual record for them to review, should the appellant wish to appeal to the higher court again in the case of an unfavorable ruling by the lower court.

All these prudent judicial things are exactly what the Supreme Court 5 did NOT do. Instead, they called for hurry up further briefing on the new question of law THEY wanted to rule on (Stevens' dissent p. 4), in a vacuum of insufficient facts to make those arguments of law. Instead, they set a scary new purported standard of review that says they basically can make rulings on any point of law THEY want to raise, whether developed in a lower court by an appellant or not.

This is truly frightening! It means that these five absolute dictators in black robes have now asserted the unheard of prerogative to make their own law pretty much any time they like, if only tangentially related to appellant's actual arguments on appeal (opinion pp. 13-14), a profoundly dangerous NEW standard, to become a new stare decisis if not immediately challenged and reversed by their removal from office. It means they now assert unchecked prerogative to make their own findings of fact whenever necessary to reach the result THEY want to reach.

And they must be stopped. The Supreme Court 5 must be impeached before they go even further off the deep end. Whatever else within the law that Congress can do to counteract this decision must be done, and to make sure such a thing can never, ever happen again.

So please submit both action pages above now. The next alert in this series will analyze the totally bogus basis of the so-called facts the Supreme Court pulled out of sheer hot air in this case.

NEW FOUR COLOR BUMPER STICKERS

In the meantime we are making available for no charge (not even shipping) your choice of one of two new bumper stickers. Take a "Corporations Are NOT The People" bumper sticker, OR a "Impeach The Supreme Court 5" bumper sticker for free. Of course if you can make a contribution (or if you want both), please DO contribute what you can, which is what allows us to send these out for free to anyone who cannot make a donation right now.

We have engaged one of the top commercial printers in the country for printing these, they have gone to press using the highest quality 4 color process, the proofs are absolutely gorgeous, and we will be taking delivery shortly of the first run.

So you can still request your bumper sticker from the return page after you submit either of the action pages above to get in on the first shipping. Or you can do directly to this page and get them there.

Bumper Stickers for no charge: http://www.peaceteam.net/bumper_stickers.php

Facebook participants can also submit the action pages at

Corporations Are Not The People: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1029

Impeach The Supreme Court 5: http://apps.facebook.com/fb_voices/action.php?qnum=pnum1030

And on Twitter, just send the following Twitter reply for the Corporations Are Not The People action

@cxs #p1029

And this Twitter reply for the Impeach The Supreme Court 5 action

@cxs #p1030

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.millionfaxmarch.com/in.htm

Keiser Report Reports Solution

2010-01-30T05:08:00.000-08:00

At the end of this video, there are solutions presented to solve a lot of the economic problems...

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/202121-Keiser-Report-12-Markets-Finance-Scandal-

Keiser Report №12: Markets! Finance! Scandal!
Russia Today
Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:54 EST

Every week Max Keiser looks at all the scandal behind the financial news headlines. This time Max Keiser and co-host Stacy Herbert look at the scandal behind the headlines about the Volcker plan, the Supreme Court ruling and about Central Banks robbing the middle classes. Keiser also speaks to Fred Harrison, the Renegade Economist, about property bubbles and privatizing wages.

Save The Middle Class While Fixing the Banks for Good

2010-01-30T04:54:00.001-08:00

http://www.oilprice.com/article-save-the-middle-class-while-fixing-the-banks-for-good.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+oilpricecom+%28Oil+Price%29

29th Jan 2010
Save The Middle Class While Fixing the Banks for Good

While I’m disgusted with the level of banker’s bonuses and with the obscene leverage practices financial institutions undertook, I do not think the answer to how we clean up them up now is to pile on yet more regulation. To be sure, banks that helped bring down the world economy and then subsequently got bailed out by the taxpayers should not be making billions of dollars in bonuses, especially while the middle class is suffering so greatly. And if we’re going to keep the FDIC in effect, a certain amount of regulation is required to protect taxpayer-backed deposits. But the real remedy does not rest with government, as it was their consistent meddling with markets that engendered the crisis to begin with.

The root cause of the credit crisis did not emanate from banks. It was from the government which manipulated the cost of money and its supply. If banks are given a virtual unlimited amount of money for free, they will find a way to lend it out. That’s what banks do. Also, the demand for money on the part of consumers and the enterprise becomes distorted due to artificially produced low interest rates. As a result the money supply booms and asset bubbles are created. Capital then becomes stretched and balance sheets become overleveraged. Yes, bankers acted irresponsibly and I am in no way exculpated them from their bad behavior. But our central bank gave them the kerosene and then lit the fuse. How can the subsequent explosion of their balance sheets really come as a surprise?

But the government does not have any incentive to relinquish control of how much money is in circulation and what interest rate it should carry. That is where they derive a great portion of their power and influence. Therefore, the solution deemed appropriate on the part of government will be; to tax financial institutions, to place a size limit on banks in order to avoid the too big to fail concept, regulate the trading practices on money derived from deposits and to impose arbitrary and capricious capital requirements.

To be sure, no amount of regulation will be able to abrogate greed, but it will instead serve as an example of the law of unintended consequences. Banks got into trouble and then the government bailed them out. Now the government thinks they own them. But it won't stop with increased fees and regulations. They actually want to dictate the lending practices of banks and force them to write down the principal of their loans. Just listen to Robert Weissman (the President of Public Citizen) who appeared with me on CNBC’s “The Call” on Thursday January 21st. Unfortunately, his views are also shared by James B. Lockhart, who is the former Director of the Oversight Board of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (the regulator of FNM and FRE).

But this slippery slope of statist intervention won’t reverse course until there is a renaissance of markets and a repudiation of government manipulation on the part of American citizens. However, at this juncture we are going full speed ahead in the wrong direction.

The truth is that greed cannot be regulated and banks will find a way around virtually any government led attempt to fetter risk taking. The reality maybe hard to come to terms with but the global experiment with having money created by fiat and interest rates that are set by decree is a miserable failure. Interest rates must be derived through the market function of the demand for money vs. the supply of savings. And money should be backed by something other than a push of a button. Our founding fathers were correct when they provided in the constitution guarantees that our money should only consist of gold and silver. They were afraid of relinquishing the value of our currency to politicians and bankers, who they knew would destroy the middle class by eroding the purchasing power of their money. By having the money supply backed by gold we can finally eliminate the Federal Reserve and the bailout nation it brought about. Banks will lend out money much more prudently, as there will be no longer be a central bank “Put” waiting in the wings. Businesses must also be allowed to fail. Finally, we will be spared from the rampant creation of money, which always finds its way to the elite in society first.

Unless we recognize that fact, bankers will grow fatter on bonuses as the chasm between the very rich and poor grows deeper. The devastation of the middle class will continue and this current economic malaise will only become exacerbated by a steady incursion of the state into the affairs of markets.

Be sure to listen in on my Mid-Week Reality Check and follow my blog Pentonomics at www.greenfaucet.com

Michael Pento
Senior Market Strategist
Delta Global Advisors
866-772-1198
mpento@deltaga.com
www.deltaga.com

Better Off Deadbeat: Craig Cunningham Has a Simple Solution for Getting Bill Collectors Off His Back - He Sues Them.

2010-01-30T04:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.dallasobserver.com/content/printVersion/1653972

Kimberly Thorpe
Dallas Observer
Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:17 EST

Unlike his neighbors' homes, Craig Cunningham's house in Northeast Dallas looks abandoned. The grass is dried out. The concrete slab under the front door is lopsided and cracked. The green exterior has faded to a toxic-looking shade. Yellow Pages pile up near the front door, and the black mailbox is stuffed full. Maybe the home has been foreclosed on. That wouldn't be a surprise in this economy.

But no, that's not the case. Inside, the 29-year-old Cunningham hunkers his 6-foot-2-inch frame on a dumpy couch. His heavy arms extend from his sides, palms up, so two Chihuahuas, Angel and Chuay, can curl under them. Although it's 10 a.m. on a weekday, he's wearing slippers.

He leans forward to lift some paperwork out of a plastic tub on the coffee table. The phone rings, and he answers with a soft voice. It's just a friend, and soon he hangs up. He's waiting for a particular type of phone call - one from a representative of a debt collection agency or a credit card company, whom he'll try to ensnare like a Venus fly trap. It's not unlikely that Cunningham's next call will be from a bill collector, since he's between jobs - except for being in the Army Reserve - and owes $100,000 in debts.

While most Americans with unpaid bills dread the collector's call, Cunningham sees them as lucrative opportunities. Many collection and credit card companies, intentionally or not, violate little-known consumer rights laws, and Cunningham's favorite pastime is catching them doing so and then suing them. In fact, it's a profitable side job.

Call it ironic, but the only house on the block that appears to be the foreclosed end to some sad financial story is in fact the home of one of the debt collection industry's emerging and persistent threats. Cunningham calls himself a private attorney general - someone who files private lawsuits in the public interest. Debt collectors call him a credit terrorist.

Patrick Lunsford, who edits InsideARM, a trade magazine for the debt collection industry, knows the term. "There is a sub-group out there that does actually advise people on how to bait [collectors]," he says. "That's something that really gets under the skin of, well, obviously, collectors."

Cunningham beats the debt collectors at their own game. He turns their money-making practice into a financial liability. He is a regular guy who has become a radical enemy of the banking system.

In 2005, two foreclosures pushed Cunningham near financial ruin. Like many Americans, he fell enchanted by the siren's song of easy credit and borrowed more than $100,000 to bet on risky, high-yielding investments, such as stock in the now vilified sub-prime mortgage industry. Then, while stationed with the Army in El Paso, he attempted to become an absentee landlord and got zero-percent-down sub-prime mortgages to buy low-income four-plexes in Houston and Dallas. With the interest earned on his high-yielding stocks he was paying back his low-interest credit card debt; now, he was using the mortgages to borrow even more.

Then, the bottom fell out. Investors like Cunningham fell the fastest. He sold his Houston homes, but his Dallas properties were foreclosed on. The collection calls started. He was running scared.

Desperation took him online in a search of anything that could save him from his own $100,000 in bad choices. One afternoon while sitting on his couch in his El Paso home, he found a way to fight back. He stumbled across hundreds of other distraught consumers like himself on credit message boards, each with some different version of the same story of bad choices and greed. And, he found a new way to deal with his debt: He could hide behind the law.

His new online friends pointed him to a number of federal and state statutes protecting consumers like him against overly aggressive and abusive debt collectors and a credit system stacked against the little guy. If you knew your rights, he learned on the message boards, you were very likely to catch a collector violating them. Then you could sue.

Cunningham armed himself with this knowledge, and the next time a debt collector called, the trap was set.

It didn't take long. Cunningham had canceled a home alarm service with ADT Security after two months, and the company had billed him a $450 early termination fee, which he disputed. ADT sent his account to Equinox Financial Management Solutions, a third-party debt collector. The collection agency sent him a letter asking that he call back immediately. He dialed, armed with a voice recorder.

"Can you garnish my wages if I don't pay?" he asked.

"Yes," the voice on the other end of the line said.

"Can you put a lien on my house?"

"Yes."

Wrong answers. Turns out, Texas consumer rights laws are some of the most consumer-friendly in the country. And according to a federal consumer protection law, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), debt collectors are prohibited from threatening legal action that would violate state laws. In this case, garnishing wages or putting a lien on Cunningham's house would violate the Texas Debt Collection Act.

Cunningham knew he had a good enough case to file a lawsuit against the debt collection agency, and for his first lawsuit, he decided to enlist the help of a lawyer. Two months later, he had a check in his hand for $1,000.

"It's like discovering fire," says Cunningham, thumbing through the stack of lawsuit papers on his table.

He immediately started devouring as much information as he could about the three chief federal laws that protect consumers from collectors: the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). In the next four years, Cunningham accused debt collectors of misrepresenting the amount he owed (an FDCPA violation that entitles a consumer to collect up to $1,000). He sued over prerecorded and auto-dialed calls to his cellular phone (a TCPA violation worth up to $1,500 per call). He also filed complaints that agencies failed to investigate his claims that his credit file contains inaccurate information, a breach of the Fair Credit Reporting Act worth up to $1,000 per violation. All told, he filed 15 other lawsuits in federal court without the help of a lawyer, earning himself settlements totaling more than $20,000.

"Most people hear about the abuses that debt collectors do, but you just didn't hear about the second part of it, where people sue the collectors," he says.

Cunningham is one of thousands of hounded debtors who are trading in their paralyzing fears and learning to stand up for themselves. Americans as a whole owe some $2.5 trillion in consumer debt, according to the Federal Reserve, a figure that doesn't include home mortgages. Nearly four in five Americans have credit cards and half carry a balance, according to the Obama administration.

In 2008, the Federal Trade Commission, the nation's consumer protection agency, received more than 78,000 complaints against third-party debt collectors, 8,000 more than in 2007, and early numbers for 2009 indicate the growth will double. While the FTC gets the bulk of consumer complaints, today more consumers are fighting back with their own lawsuits than ever before. In 2009, nearly 10,000 cases under FDCPA, FCRA or TCPA statutes were filed around the country, mostly in federal courts. That's a 50 percent increase from 2008, and an 83 percent growth from 2007.

A cottage industry has sprung up to counter the flood of cases. Two new companies now offer the credit and collection industries databases of repeat plaintiffs filing under the FDCPA. The companies, FDCPA Case Listing Service LLC and WebRecon, offer something akin to a background check for collection agencies. For example, if an agency received a delinquent account belonging to Cunningham, it could run his name through a database and learn he's a repeat litigant; then the agency could either close his account or sue him first.

Back in his dim living room, Cunningham returns to the pile of paperwork on the table. His soft voice gets bolder when he recounts his war stories with the collection industry. His 15 lawsuits include one filed in federal court against Alliance One, a third-party agency collecting on behalf of Verizon. Alliance One added a $50 collection fee and misrepresented the debt he owed Verizon, he says, which is an unfair practice under FDCPA. Another lawsuit was over the collection of an outstanding bill from Time Warner. The collection agency, Advantage Cable Services, failed to post a surety bond required by the state of Texas in order to collect debts here. Plus, after telling them to stop calling his cellular phone with automated calls, they continued, so he sued and won around $3,500, the industry standard for many consumer rights violations. (Collection agencies frequently settle such lawsuits because that's cheaper than taking them to trial.)

His debt with Time Warner hasn't gone away, and he's in the middle of his biggest FDCPA violation lawsuit ever, demanding upward of $200,000 from the current collection agency.

Debtors, either because they feel morally obligated or because they don't know their options, get backed into a corner by their creditors and believe they have to repay their debts, he says. Not so with Cunningham. "I don't have to do anything but stay black and die," he says, a small, smug smile on his lips.

Cunningham wasn't always such a stickler.

As a kid growing up in Detroit, family time meant gathering around the living room table to play stock market board games. His mother was a registered nurse, and his father worked for 25 years as a computer engineer for Ford. When he was 15, Cunningham met his "first millionaire," as he tells it, still wide-eyed. This high school teacher grew wealthy off the then-booming real estate market of the mid-'90s. "He accomplished it through business and not sports," he says. "For me, that was where the light first went on."

Cunningham, a high school athlete, dreamed of making millions playing pro football, but he was accepted to U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where a degree would give him a more grounded back-up plan. The economics major also sought out an additional perk unique to West Point: stipends and absurdly low-interest loans. In his junior year, in 2002, Cunningham took out the maximum amount for a loan and dumped the $25,000 into the booming stock market.

"Everybody was making easy money," he recalls, and the young cadet wanted a shot at making even more. He spent hours on his dial-up Internet connection learning money-making strategies that capitalized on the cheap and easy credit of the times. By Googling "credit help" or "increase credit score," he landed on message boards on which posters shared how-to tips to boost his credit score and dupe major banks and credit card companies into giving him cards with credit limits around $10,000 and $20,000 at low interest rates. He'd borrow from the cards, invest the money in stocks with payouts higher than his interest rate and pay back the debt with the profits.

Cunningham learned on these boards that the credit card companies, banks and the credit bureaus worked together to determine not only your credit score but how much credit to extend you and at what interest rate.

Cunningham had no problem spending all the money anyone would loan him, but he needed to pay off some of the accrued debt to maintain his credit score. He knew his military loan did not get reported to any of the three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. So, by paying off his credit card debt with money from that loan, he artificially maintained his credit score and continued to be approved for high credit. Sounds fishy, but Cunningham didn't feel that he was taking advantage of the system, at least not anymore than the next guy or the brokers and bankers at the time.

"It's their system," says Cunningham. "I didn't make the rules. I'm just learning what the rules are."

Cunningham now had more than $100,000 in credit card debt, but he had a lot of money coming in as well. He was a big-time shareholder in one sub-prime lending company, Nova Star Financial, and for three years in a row he saw dividends as high as 20 percent for his investment.

Any money he was making went right back into the system. Those good times, of course, wouldn't last.

Not wanting to miss out on the easy money in real estate buying and selling, he bought two low-income four-plexes in Dallas in 2005, using a mortgage company for the loan. He put no money down, but the interest rate was high.

Then he got burned. The four-plex's seller wasn't completely honest about the occupancy of the properties. Cunningham's scheme disintegrated within six months. He was scrambling to make the mortgage payments at the high interest rate without any tenants. He knew it wouldn't be long until he couldn't make the payments and he would be foreclosed on. Somehow, he didn't despair.

"I remember one day I just got pissed," Cunningham says. "I'm running around trying to keep the ship afloat, and the banks don't care."

Cunningham had called the bank as well as the FBI to report the mortgage fraud committed by the seller, but nobody pursued his case.

"The regulators, the FBI, they don't care. So, why should I care?" he says.

The Dallas properties were foreclosed, and his obsessively maintained credit score seemed wrecked. Cunningham returned to the online credit board for help. This time, however, he wasn't looking to add an artificial shine to his credit score, he was looking for a way out of the ashes. Cunningham discovered a whole other world of consumer-generated knowledge. This was a rogue group of disgruntled consumers who were trying to save themselves and their credit by filing lawsuits when the collection industry screwed up the mechanics of debt reporting and collection. What he found was an instrument not of repair or reconciliation, but of vengeance.

"All the conventional wisdom, all the right people say, 'Pay your bills on time and work with your creditors,'" Cunningham says, recalling his thoughts at the time. Yet he had discovered a new set of people who posted their credit reports on line and their successful lawsuits, showing how much money they won in settlements that simultaneously removed a bad debt from their credit report. "I said, 'Maybe there's another way.' Again, just revolution. I never even thought about it."

The knowledge on these boards originated from consumers testing the boundaries of the credit system through their own experiences. The nature of this information, from the beginning, was a mixture of anarchistic tendencies, vengeance and greed. Now the wisdom of the boards has been distilled into an e-book published in January. Debtsmanship was written by Steven Katz, a former New York debt collector turned consumer advocate, who now lives in Phoenix. In 2005, Katz founded a message board called "Debtorboards," with the slogan "Sue your creditor and win!"

Katz doesn't believe that people are morally obligated to pay back their debts. That notion was invented by debt collectors as a way to beat people into submission, he says. "Bill collectors would love for you to send them a check and then explain to your kids because you have the moral obligation to pay your debt they're not eating this week," he says. "But they don't see the moral obligation to feed your children or yourself.

"People are brainwashed to think that paying a credit card is more important than paying for the necessities of life," Katz says. "If you're in a position where you have to make a choice, my argument is food, clothing and shelter come first... Nobody ever went to hell for not paying a debt."

"Fight back" is the take-away message from a visit to Debtorboards, which is intended to help consumers who wish to file lawsuits without the help of lawyers. Debtorboards outlines steps consumers can take to deal with bothersome debt collectors. For example, if a debt collector is only bothering you, you could send them a letter or sue them. However, if you're so far in debt that you see no way out but bankruptcy, then you can check out the board's "frustrating the skip tracer" technique. There, you'll find tips on how to run and hide from a collector.

Another Debtorboards user is 29-year-old Daniel Smith, who lives with his fiancé outside of Seattle, Washington. Early in 2009, he tried to obtain financing for a home, but was turned down by Bank of America. He soon discovered that an old girlfriend had put his name on her bank account before she fell into massive debt. He wrote angry letters to the bank, but nothing changed. He sat down at his computer and typed in "Bank of America" and "Fair Debt Collection Act" and soon landed on Debtorboards. "I spent hours upon hours upon hours on there," Smith says. "The big epiphany is I'm a little guy but I've got a voice and I'm going to use it."

Like Cunningham, Smith now armed himself with voice recorders and began keeping meticulous financial files. His file cabinet grew quickly. "I mean there's nothing I don't document now and that's probably the best thing a consumer can do."

Smith is an Army vet, an EMT, and a project manager for a construction company. He doesn't advocate stiffing the original creditor on the bill. In fact, Smith will often pay the original creditor, but still go after the violating collection agency.

"The standard line from collection agencies is always, 'Oh, gosh, no, we never violate.'...For the most part, the reality of it is you can sit down and find violation in almost every collection attempt made in America."

Cunningham insists that the court system ignores lawsuits over frivolous violations. His cases, he claims, are built on true screw-ups. Cunningham won his first lawsuit, after all, after a collection company threatened to garnish his wages and put a lien on his house, both violations of Texas law.

Although that first lawsuit was filed with the help of a consumer rights lawyer, Cunningham has been filing on his own since then. Once he saw that the entire amount of the original settlement was upward of $3,500, and he only got $1,000, while his lawyer pocketed the rest as payment, Cunningham was motivated to go pro se.

"I remember seeing the $3,500 and thinking shoot that's a lot of money, and I'm only getting a grand, so maybe I can do a little better than that if there is a next time."

Cunningham made sure there'd be a next time. A company was trying to collect on an outstanding utility bill. They threatened to send this debt to the credit bureaus and wreck his credit score. He ended up paying the utility company the money he owed, but sued the collection company because of how they threatened and harassed him for the debt. The case earned him close to $3,500.

He was fast becoming one of the most hated debtors in Dallas, and part of an especially loathed minority of debtors in the country.

Cunningham returned to Texas from a year of active duty with the Army in late 2007, and moved to Dallas. He continued filing lawsuits against debt collection agencies, and he became ever more active on the message boards, holding long conversations about the state of the country with his online pals. In the meantime, he noticed that Debtorboards founder Steven Katz had created a new thread titled "The list you want to be on." Here, Katz reported that a new company had appeared that was dedicated to aiding collection companies scrub their database against repeat FDCPA litigants, like Cunningham.

Cunningham toyed with the idea of suing them. After all, he thought, if they were working with the collection industry and the credit bureaus (FDCPA Case Listing Service partnered with TransUnion in 2009), then the companies sounded like credit reporting agencies to Cunningham, which would mean they would have to abide by certain credit reporting laws. Cunningham wrote to FDCPA Case Listing Service asking for a copy of his credit report (by law, a credit reporting agency must provide a consumer report if asked for one). Instead of a report, however, Cunningham found a lawsuit against him in his mailbox filed in May 2008 in Atlanta federal court. It alleged: "The defendant subscribes to and makes postings to a Web site in which consumers share information and promote litigation against the collection industry...The defendant has now conspired with others on the internet to incite civil litigation against plaintiff for the exclusive purpose of extorting money from the plaintiff."

FDCPA Case Listing Service asked the court to declare that they are not a consumer reporting agency and not subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. To Cunningham, this was a clear attempt to silence him. Cunningham filed a motion to dismiss the case. For one thing, filing the suit in Atlanta was improper venue, Cunningham wrote. They should have sued him in Texas. Furthermore, since Cunningham hadn't actually sued the company, the company had no valid reason to sue him. The court sided with Cunningham.

WebRecon offers a similar but expanded service to FDCPA Case Listing Service. Rather than only track FDCPA cases, WebRecon makes an effort to track FCRA, TCPA, and state and local cases, as well. WebRecon is headed by Jack Gordon out of Michigan. Gordon ran his own third-party collection agency for years until a spate of FDCPA lawsuits in 2008 forced him out of business. He is familiar with Cunningham's type.

"This is definitely, if I can use a really strong word, a cesspool," Gordon says. "The overwhelming majority of these suits are not pro se. Now when you're focusing exclusively on pro se, I think you're getting into a little bit of a different area. I've spent time personally on some of the Web sites that a lot of pro se litigants frequent...I would have to say they are far more radicalized element of society, and there's certainly I think reason for concern.

"You're dealing with somebody who's looking for an opportunity. They revel in either getting opportunities or making opportunities to try out everything they're learning online. That's hardly an exaggeration," he says, laughing. "It's really an experience spending time there!"

Gordon may have a personal vendetta against Cunningham types, but so do others who represent the collection industry.

ACA International is the largest trade group representing third-party debt collection agencies. Tom Morgan is the Texas executive director for ACA International and he believes that FDCPA lawsuits will continue to rise as more and more people in this economy can't pay their debts. He views the agencies as a kind of indirect victim in the rising tide of consumer fury and desperation.

"While our members do get filed on from time to time, the FDCPA is so highly technical there are quote, technical, violations that can occur," Morgan says. "You know, somebody makes a mistake. But there's no intent, OK, to defraud people or to violate the law.

"Usually it's settled because the agency says, Uh, we didn't intend to do that. Our collector said the wrong thing and we fess up and say, 'I didn't mean to do it but I did it...

"And this is where some of our members feel aggrieved in that because there's a hyper-technical opportunity for a plaintiff's attorney to come in, it is cheaper to settle than to fight it. And sometimes they'd really like to fight it because they don't believe they are guilty, but it's so costly, so they settle it."

Thomas Stockton is on the executive committee of ACA International and also the founder and chief executive of a local collection agency, CMI. (Cunningham is in the midst of an ongoing legal dispute with CMI, which picked up his outstanding Time Warner debt.)

"In my opinion there are two reasons why there are more suits being filed today," Stockton says. "You've got the Internet sites...And, it's easy to file suit. You can do it on your own. You don't have to have an attorney."

Stockton says, however, that the better question is how many of the suits are successful.

The answer depends on how you define success. Debt collectors point to all the settlements they are forced to make because it's cheaper than fighting a frivolous suit. To Cunningham and other pro se litigants, any payment is a victory.

"Does if make sense to spend $10,000 to win this suit or pay the litigant $500 to settle?" says Stockton. "Depending on the situation, it becomes a business decision at some point."

Cunningham filed his lawsuit against Credit Management, L.P. (CMI) in August 2009, claiming violations in the amount of around $200,000 - by far his gutsiest lawsuit yet. The original bill for Time Warner was for $79.84 back while he was living in El Paso. Cunningham admits he may have missed the last payment for the Time Warner bill. Time Warner, rather than validate the bill, sent his account to a collection agency. That was ACS, which Cunningham sued for violating his Texas rights, as well as federal law. ACS closed his account, but the debt wasn't forgiven. Instead, CMI picked it up.

CMI started calling Cunningham's cell phone with an auto-dialer, leaving prerecorded messages to please call them immediately regarding an outstanding bill. Cunningham told them to stop calling his cell phone on the auto-dialer, but they continued, each call a violation of TCPA. As Cunningham disputed the bill, CMI by law is also expected to cease collection efforts. So every call was another violation of FDCPA. Plus, to this day, CMI has not provided Cunningham with anything from Time Warner, he says, either a bill or a letter, verifying that he in fact owes anything, another violation of the law. "I don't really know if I owe it," Cunningham says. "If I do, send me a bill. If they don't want to send me a bill, I don't think I need to pay 'em."

CMI has countersued Cunningham, and even asked the court for a protective order from Cunningham: "Plaintiff Craig Cunningham (herein "Plaintiff") has filed suit against a business, Credit Management, LP (herein "CMI"), and twenty-seven (27) of its employees in their individual capacities," reads the motion for a protective order filed in Northern District of Texas in December 2009. "Defendants move for a protective order to protect Defendants from the annoyance, oppression, undue burden and expense of objecting and responding to improper, repetitive and irrelevant discovery requests."

In December, Cunningham was called in for a six-hour deposition, the longest he's ever sat through, at which the lawyers printed out pages of his online comments to accuse him of acting like a lawyer. Plus, CMI insists that they didn't violate any laws and that Cunningham is acting in bad faith. Although the company already offered Cunningham money to settle the case, Cunningham refused, asking for much more than the "industry standard," as Cunningham calls it, of $3,500.

"If they don't pay a bunch of money, if they don't feel pain, they will not change," he says.

A big win in his case against CMI could go a long way toward clearing Cunningham's debts - if he ever chose to pay them, that is.

"I took outsize risks, and I got burned," he says. "When myself and some other fellow small investors were losing their assets, nobody cared."

Up until now, everything was about making easy money for Cunningham. Now, it's about justice - or at least what he sees as justice.

"When you or I make a mistake, they say, 'Hey, tough nuts, be smarter next time, you know, bad luck, didn't work out for ya," he says. "When the fat cats on Wall Street make a mistake, they say, 'Oh, national emergency! We've got to bail these guys out."

Since nobody has showed up to bail Cunningham out, he's decided some of the $100,000 debt he once amassed will never get paid back.

"I already paid them off," he says. "The government took my money without asking me and gave it to the banks. And since I owe the banks money, but they already got my money from the government, I say we're even."

Some remedies for the Supreme Court power grab

2010-01-29T11:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00429

Some remedies for the Supreme Court power grab
COMMENTARY | January 26, 2010
It’s easy to find activism, impossible to find original intent behind the Roberts/Scalia group’s ruling on corporate political spending. Martin Lobel suggests six sharp, practical steps to deal with it.
By Martin Lobel
Lobel@LNLlaw.com

Lincoln said that, even in the midst of war, the power of corporations made him tremble for the safety of the country.

The media need to focus public attention on the judicial legislating by the five “conservative” Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in deciding Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. They ruled that corporations have a right to spend as much money as they want to buy ads to support or oppose politicians – a question that the litigants weren’t arguing but that the Justices reached out to decide.

Justices Kennedy, Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito divined that that was the original intent of the drafters of our Constitution even though Jefferson had warned against just such concentrations of power and they ignored Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion in Bank of the United States v. Deveaux when he referred to a corporation as an “invisible, intangible and artificial being” and “certainly not a citizen.” Apparently they believe that they know better what the drafters of the Constitution meant than Chief Justice Marshall who actually knew the drafters. The only rational conclusion to draw from this action is that “original intent” is merely a subterfuge to justify whatever action Scalia and his followers want to take.

The five “conservative” Justices had no problem substituting their opinion for the carefully balanced Congressional legislation to curb the power of money in elections. Under the now stricken McCain-Feingold legislation, corporations could spend money that was “ voluntarily” contributed to Political Action Committees (PACs) or to overpaid lobbyists who in turn would contribute or bundle contributions to candidates. Whether such contributions were really voluntary or not is open to question, but at least it gave economically powerful interests a means to influence elections without the appearance of a quid pro quo that direct expenditures entail. Apparently, even though the Justices don’t run for office, they felt they were more expert in deciding what influence money has on elections than those who do.

There is another interesting, and I hope unintended consequence, of the decision. Foreign corporations can now influence American politics directly by spending unlimited amounts of money. I can just see the memo now from an American subsidiary of a Chinese corporation to its home office:

“Dear Chairman, The United States Supreme Court has just decided we can directly influence their elections with our money. Please send me $100 million of the US Treasury Bonds we own so we can defeat those politicians who stand in our way of taking over the US economy.”

As long as those five supposedly conservative Justices are there, we are likely to see even more judicial activism and legislating, contrary to the judicial philosophy Chief Justice Roberts espoused at his confirmation hearings. It will be interesting to see what the Court will do with a case seeking to prohibit the publishing of the names of those petitioners opposed to gay marriage on the grounds they might be subject to ridicule or harassment. Will the same First Amendment rights so precious to corporations be struck down when it comes to revealing who signed a petition seeking a referendum opposing gay rights?

Congress still has remedies to protect the country from abusive corporate political spending. Here are several of them:

Congress and the SEC have the power to make sure that corporate political spending reflects the will of the shareholders, not just management. There is absolutely no dispute that boards of directors have a fiduciary obligation to represent the interests of the shareholders, although, unfortunately, since boards are chosen by management, this has been honored more in its breach than its observance.

As a partial solution, the SEC and the FEC should promulgate rules before the next election to ensure that decisions on corporate political spending represent the desires of the shareholders. This could be done by requiring boards of directors to poll shareholders before making any specific political expenditure. Boards should be required to vote on each such political expenditure and publicly reveal every member’s vote. Ads paid for by a corporation or group of corporations should be required to reveal who was paying for it and perhaps, like a candidate, the Chairman of the Board should be required to appear and say the board approved the ad.

In order to prevent money laundering, bundling the cost of such ads under a group’s name should be prohibited so the public really knows who paid for the ad. Shareholders who disapproved of such expenditures should be allowed to get from the corporation their proportionate share of the expenditure. This wouldn’t have much effect if an individual wanted his money, but it would have an effect if pension funds and other large investors demanded their money.
In addition, foreign owned or controlled (5 percent or more?) corporations should be prohibited from spending money to influence American elections.

Congress ought to explicitly prohibit corporations from deducting the cost of such ads from their income so that taxpayers are not subsidizing them.

Congress should prohibit corporations that are government contractors from spending money on such ads. Such spending would seem to fall within the same rationale that the Court recognized in continuing to prohibit direct corporate contributions to politicians or upholding the Hatch Act.

If any member of the Court voted to strike down such clearly constitutional restrictions on corporate spending, it would then be time to discuss impeachment for subverting the Constitution.

We should remember what Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1864:

We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . . It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."
The passage appears in a letter from Pres. Abraham Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864.

That Gift $ Could Have Created a Socialist Bank Like Healthy N. Dakota Has

2010-01-28T15:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/That-Gift--Could-Have-Cre-by-Jay-Janson-100123-369.html

January 25, 2010
That Gift $ Could Have Created a Socialist Bank Like Healthy N. Dakota Has
By Jay Janson

Almost a year ago, at the Ethical Cultural Society, we heard Nobel Prize in Economics Laureate Joseph Stiglitz calmly explain in simple words how the government, then already run by the Obama administration, could have better used the trillion dollars given to mammoth private investment banks to rescue CEOs - who had wildly mismanaged their speculations and created a world crisis and their own demise into bankruptcy - to fund instead a government bank of its own. (He left unmentioned, prosecution of such bankers guilty of crimes against humanity.)

As a clear and long successful example of what Prof. Stiglitz was proposing, one may note that "The Bank of North Dakota is the only state-owned bank in America--what Republicans might call an idiosyncratic bastion of socialism. It also earned a record profit last year even as its private-sector corollaries lost billions," Josh Harkinson in How the Nation's Only State-Owned Bank Became the Envy of Wall Street, Mother Jones, 3/27/09
click here

North Dakota is just about the only state of the union which is not in some kind of financial difficulty. It neither faced a budget deficit for its 2007-2009 biennium nor for its 2009-2011 biennium, while "46 of 50 states are insolvent and could be filing Chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings in the next two years." as Ellen Brown notes in HOW NORTH DAKOTA'S BANKING SYSTEM COULD HELP US GET OUT OF THIS MESS, Global Research, 3/4/09
click here

It seems the power elite of Wall Street are going to allow its U.S. President to close the barn door a crack now that public rage about so many of their horses having been stolen is getting up to threatening proportions. Its news media are assigned to call this patch up work a form of populist politics.

But Stiglitz spoke not of tinkering with regulating a failed system, but of a new creative start to put credibility into banking and America back to work.

A U.S. Government Bank could more easily, naturally and patriotically provide credit for legitimate industrial and commercial, business, especially small business starting up, and even for cultural and for enterprises that could show some community collateral and/or reasonably good expectations, for a U.S.Government Bank would function as a service industry, in more or less the way the history of private banking began with the trustworthy Fugger family's convenient letters of exchange six hundred years ago in Germany. In the ancient world, banking is said to have existed before forms of money as a means of records of inventory and exchange of goods and funding of projects.

A bank operating strictly as a service industry has the advantage of not needing to show a profit margin high enough to be able to attract and keep investors from seeking more lucrative opportunities for capital growth elsewhere in the market.

Much in the same way, other government agencies are largely free of such an onus to grow beyond founding purposes, principles and parameters that justify their existence. The U.S. Post Office, for instance, is not obligated to dire and desperate competition with DHL and Federal Express to continually expand itself - unless it seems appropriate to its role in providing a basic and limited public service within the bounds of the law which established this particular public enterprise.

The Social Security Administration of the U.S. Government does not compete with, nor is a hindrance to, private insurance companies providing further insurance in case of incapacity or death, for the law limits it from delving into areas beyond its basic safety net purpose. (But the existence of Social Security does insure that insurance companies cannot take its costumers for a ride out of utter fear of no protection from calamity.)

In other fields as well, public entities function undeniably well, yet do not inhibit private enterprise except in curtailing squeezing a defenseless society lacking some basic service.

A plethora of private insurance corporations operate in Germany, offering, to those who can afford it, higher and more specialized coverage than the German National Health Insurance, which Chancellor Bismarck instituted in 1883, which of course does not encroach beyond its comprehensive but limited mandate. Everyone goes to whatever doctor they want and when necessary pays that extra above what the national insurance covers (this writer's student experience in 1953).

Private insurance companies exist everywhere in countries that insure their citizens' health coverage. Citizens need not look to private charity or suffer from government condescension in clinics for the poor, with sliding scales to leach out whatever money possible.

Germany has many prestigious private universities alongside fine state universities as in the U.S., but Germans enjoy the right to free secondary education if one can pass entrance exams, and receive a living stipend as well - also given to accepted foreign students. It is plain that the German government providing free education does not interfere with private enterprise in that field. It merely prevents the banks from taking a cruel profit from a young person's desire for learning.

The argument of America's absolute capitalists extremists, that government is some sort of beast divorced from what the electorate has chosen and is primarily interference with private rights especially the rights of gangs of corporations, is turned on its head when it comes to American boys (and now girls) sacrificing their lives for that same government, which in war time is presented as a noble creation of democracy and the will of the people.

Only in America is this farcical contradiction so well papered over by capitalist owned conglomerates that oversee the national information network from cradle to grave of a massively beguiled and gullible public.

How to have factually complete newscasts in historical context with the intention to educate, rather than to propagandize, edify rather than commodify, uplift rather than downgrade - all in the name of promoting commerce and consumerism for private interests? This a topic for another article, but some additional public enterprise is surely missing and needed to protect citizens and nation from the dissemination of intentionally false and frightening information.

The other luminary on the discussion panel that evening at Ethical Culture in New York when Prof. Stiglitz brought forth his expert, obvious though not-so-new reformist idea of a government bank to bypass the rot in our private banking industry was Barbara Ehrenreich, who used the occasion to state what was for most of the audience even more obvious, namely, that the answer to all the wayward private speculation caused misery is socialism; a socialism we have beginnings of in our fine U.S.Post Office, Social Security Administration, Medicare and Veterans Hospitals System and the socialized health benefits which the members of Congress voted themselves a long time ago.

Both Stiglitz and Ehrenreich cited how the corporate investment banks, through their political power, forced government (their government, not ours) to assume responsibility for even their limited liability in order to keep them solvent.

("Limited liability is supposed to encourage enterprise but it has also been argued that it distorts the free market by allowing the entrepreneur to externalize some risk and impose it on society at large." [Wikipedia])

A physicist like Albert Einstein might have called the trillion dollar bailout/payout to Wall Street a form of anti-socialism, perhaps even government complicity in anti-American activities or Anti-Americanism. How Ironic.