Occupy Everywhere - Sept 17th - Day of Rage Against Wall Street and what it stands for!

[Peter Lemkin]

Bank's leaked email admits Occupy' movement could impact our industry'
By David Edwards
Wednesday, December 7, 2011

A national effort to reclaim vacant properties has one of the country's largest lenders scrambling.

The financial website Zero Hedge has allegedly obtained a memo from Bank of America's field services operation warning, "We need to make sure we are all prepared."

Vocal New York organizer Sean Barry told Raw Story Tuesday that an action known as "Occupy Our Homes" would place foreclosed and homeless families in otherwise-vacant homes. That effort began Tuesday with over 40 events in more than 20 cities.

"On Tuesday December 6th there is a potential nationwide protest planned that could impact our industry," BofA employee Leonard Pavlov reportedly wrote to BAC Field Services. "We believe the protests will likely take place tomorrow at auction sites, homes that are being foreclosed, homes in the eviction stage and vacant homes."

Among other things, the memo claims Pavlov called on field services not to engage with protesters, but to ensure that BofA properties are "secured."

But it will probably take more than a few vigilant bank employees to deter the 99 percent movement.

"When it comes to Wall Street's control over our economy, our democracy and our lives, there's few better examples than the housing crisis," Barry said Tuesday. "Occupy Wall Street is going to continue to support this national Occupy Our Homes campaign, and both defend homeowners who are being threatened with eviction due to foreclosure, and to move families that need homes into vacant buildings that banks are just sitting on."

Bank of America had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.

[URL="http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2011/12/BAC%20Occupy%20Our%20Homes.jpg"]Read the entire BofA memo here.
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Update: Bank of America has confirmed the authenticity of the memo.

"As a matter of normal course of business, when we are alerted to activities that may affect our real estate owned properties, we inform our third party contractors," spokeswoman Jumana Bauwens told Raw Story. "This is standard operating procedure. The safety of our associates and third party contractors is our first priority. It is the bank's policy to protect and secure our properties for the investors who own them. Bank of America is committed to helping our customers with home retention solutions and other foreclosure avoidance programs. Foreclosure is always our last resort.

[Peter Lemkin]

Guns and Butter

"Guns, Finance and Butter - Finance Is the New Mode of Warfare" with Dr. Michael Hudson. The jobless recovery; the debt ceiling and default; China; Greece; banks, not countries, receive the bailouts; financial warfare; IMF and EU; European Central Bank; US credit default swaps; US agricultural exports create food dependency; currency devaluation devalues the price of labor; class war of banks against the rest of society.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

Bernie Sanders Proposes A Constitutional Amendment To Overturn Citizens United
December 8, 2011
By Jason Easley

Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed a constitutional amendment today that would overturn Citizens United and make it clear that corporations are not people.

Sen. Sanders' proposed Saving American Democracy amendment states,

SECTION 1. The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability companies, or other private entities established for business purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.

SECTION 2. Such corporate and other private entities established under law are subject to regulation by the people through the legislative process so long as such regulations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the States and do not limit the freedom of the press.

SECTION 3. Such corporate and other private entities shall be prohibited from making contributions or expenditures in any election of any candidate for public office or the vote upon any ballot measure submitted to the people.

SECTION 4. Congress and the States shall have the power to regulate and set limits on all election contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own spending, and to authorize the establishment of political committees to receive, spend, and publicly disclose the sources of those contributions and expenditures.

In a statement Sen. Sanders said, "There comes a time when an issue is so important that the only way to address it is by a constitutional amendment." Sanders said of the effort to override the court decision that he labeled "a complete undermining of democracy."

There is one interesting component to the Saving American Democracy Amendment that makes it different from all of the other proposed amendments and remedies designed to overturn Citizens United. Section 4 of the amendment strikes at the basis for every Supreme Court decision related to campaign finance. Sanders is also taking aim at the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo decision where the Supreme Court ruled spending money to influence elections was a form of protected free speech, and struck down limits on expenditures.

The amendment proposed by Sanders changes this by giving Congress the power to set expenditure limits on individuals, organizations, and candidates themselves. The Saving American Democracy Amendment would return the government back to the people by shutting off the money pipeline from the wealthy and special interests. It is also significant that the amendment limits the amount of money a candidate can give to their own campaign. This means that candidates would no longer have to be millionaires, or grovel at the feet of corporate America and the 1% in order to be able to run.

If this amendment was passed and ratified, anyone could run for office. The electoral process would once again be open to the candidates with the best ideas, not the biggest bank accounts. The Saving American Democracy Amendment would not only get rid of the corrupt Citizens United decision. It was also right a series of decades old wrongs that are based on the Buckley decision.

The odds of the amendment getting the support of the required two thirds majorities in the Senate and House, and ¾ of the states needed for ratification are slim, but that isn't really the point. It is important to keep calling attention to this issue. Campaign finance reform is the only way for the American people to take back their elections and government.

Sen. Sanders is trying to wake America up with this amendment. The politicians aren't going to fix it, the one percent isn't going to kill their golden goose, and the Koch brothers own a majority on the Supreme Court, so it is up to the American people to take back the government that by constitutional design belongs to them.

[Peter Lemkin]

Tuesday, December 6, 2011
My Occupy LA Arrest, by Patrick Meighan

My name is Patrick Meighan, and I'm a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom "Family Guy", and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.

I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh's "Being Peace" when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted "We Are Peaceful" and "We Are Nonviolent" and "Join Us."

As we sat there, encircled, a separate team of LAPD officers used knives to slice open every personal tent in the park. They forcibly removed anyone sleeping inside, and then yanked out and destroyed any personal property inside those tents, scattering the contents across the park. They then did the same with the communal property of the Occupy LA movement. For example, I watched as the LAPD destroyed a pop-up canopy tent that, until that moment, had been serving as Occupy LA's First Aid and Wellness tent, in which volunteer health professionals gave free medical care to absolutely anyone who requested it. As it happens, my family had personally contributed that exact canopy tent to Occupy LA, at a cost of several hundred of my family's dollars. As I watched, the LAPD sliced that canopy tent to shreds, broke the telescoping poles into pieces and scattered the detritus across the park. Note that these were the objects described in subsequent mainstream press reports as "30 tons of garbage" that was "abandoned" by Occupy LA: personal property forcibly stolen from us, destroyed in front of our eyes and then left for maintenance workers to dispose of while we were sent to prison.

When the LAPD finally began arresting those of us interlocked around the symbolic tent, we were all ordered by the LAPD to unlink from each other (in order to facilitate the arrests). Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor's legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor's left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor's right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.

It was horrible to watch, and apparently designed to terrorize the rest of us. At least I was sufficiently terrorized. I unlinked my arms voluntarily and informed the LAPD officers that I would go peacefully and cooperatively. I stood as instructed, and then I had my arms wrenched behind my back, and an officer hyperextended my wrists into my inner arms. It was super violent, it hurt really really bad, and he was doing it on purpose. When I involuntarily recoiled from the pain, the LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement. It really, really hurt and my face started bleeding and I was very scared. I begged for mercy and I promised that I was honestly not resisting and would not resist.

My hands were then zipcuffed very tightly behind my back, where they turned blue. I am now suffering nerve damage in my right thumb and palm.

I was put on a paddywagon with other nonviolent protestors and taken to a parking garage in Parker Center. They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing.

At 9 a.m. we were finally taken from the pavement into the station to be processed. The charge was sitting in the park after the police said not to. It's a misdemeanor. Almost always, for a misdemeanor, the police just give you a ticket and let you go. It costs you a couple hundred dollars. Apparently, that's what happened with most every other misdemeanor arrest in LA that day.

With us Occupy LA protestors, however, they set bail at $5,000 and booked us into jail. Almost none of the protesters could afford to bail themselves out. I'm lucky and I could afford it, except the LAPD spent all day refusing to actually *accept* the bail they set. If you were an accused murderer or a rapist in LAPD custody that day, you could bail yourself right out and be back on the street, no problem. But if you were a nonviolent Occupy LA protestor with bail money in hand, you were held long into the following morning, with absolutely no access to a lawyer.

I spent most of my day and night crammed into an eight-man jail cell, along with sixteen other Occupy LA protesters. My sleeping spot was on the floor next to the toilet.

Finally, at 2:30 the next morning, after twenty-five hours in custody, I was released on bail. But there were at least 200 Occupy LA protestors who couldn't afford the bail. The LAPD chose to keep those peaceful, non-violent protesters in prison for two full days… the absolute legal maximum that the LAPD is allowed to detain someone on misdemeanor charges.

As a reminder, Antonio Villaraigosa has referred to all of this as "the LAPD's finest hour."

So that's what happened to the 292 women and men were arrested last Wednesday. Now let's talk about a man who was not arrested last Wednesday. He is former Citigroup CEO Charles Prince. Under Charles Prince, Citigroup was guilty of massive, coordinated securities fraud.

Citigroup spent years intentionally buying up every bad mortgage loan it could find, creating bad securities out of those bad loans and then selling shares in those bad securities to duped investors. And then they sometimes secretly bet *against* their *own* bad securities to make even more money. For one such bad Citigroup security, Citigroup executives were internally calling it, quote, "a collection of dogshit". To investors, however, they called it, quote, "an attractive investment rigorously selected by an independent investment adviser".

This is fraud, and it's a felony, and the Charles Princes of the world spent several years doing it again and again: knowingly writing bad mortgages, and then packaging them into fraudulent securities which they then sold to suckers and then repeating the process. This is a big part of why your property values went up so fast. But then the bubble burst, and that's why our economy is now shattered for a generation, and it's also why your home is now underwater. Or at least mine is.

Anyway, if your retirement fund lost a decade's-worth of gains overnight, this is why.

If your son's middle school has added furlough days because the school district can't afford to keep its doors open for a full school year, this is why.

If your daughter has come out of college with a degree only to discover that there are no jobs for her, this is why.

But back to Charles Prince. For his four years of in charge of massive, repeated fraud at Citigroup, he received fifty-three million dollars in salary and also received another ninety-four million dollars in stock holdings. What Charles Prince has *not* received is a pair of zipcuffs. The nerves in his thumb are fine. No cop has thrown Charles Prince into the pavement, face-first. Each and every peaceful, nonviolent Occupy LA protester arrested last week has has spent more time sleeping on a jail floor than every single Charles Prince on Wall Street, combined.

The more I think about that, the madder I get. What does it say about our country that nonviolent protesters are given the bottom of a police boot while those who steal hundreds of billions, do trillions worth of damage to our economy and shatter our social fabric for a generation are not only spared the zipcuffs but showered with rewards?

In any event, believe it or not, I'm really not angry that I got arrested. I chose to get arrested. And I'm not even angry that the mayor and the LAPD decided to give non-violent protestors like me a little extra shiv in jail (although I'm not especially grateful for it either).

I'm just really angry that every single Charles Prince wasn't in jail with me.

Thank you for letting me share that anger with you today.

Patrick Meighan

[Keith Millea]

The politicians aren't going to fix it, the one percent isn't going to kill their golden goose, and the Koch brothers own a majority on the Supreme Court

Yes,A good reason to have added an impeach Justice Clarence Thomas resolution at the same time!

[Peter Lemkin]

Now, as I write, I'm watching the deadline approach [midnight] before the Police destroy the Occupy encampment in Boston. People will be arrested to trying to bring attention to the crimes of the Banksters and Politicians; all their property will be destroyed and TPTB will celebrate their victory over democracy and good. I feel sick. The Police are massed and just waiting until everyone is tired from lack of sleep. There are also thousands of protesters and occupiers. I'll give the post mortem later.

Oh, Almost forgot...Phoenix being raided now too!

Welcome to our fascist police state....now fully blown and formed.

[Peter Lemkin]

Tue Dec 06, 2011 at 08:00 PM PST

Outing the Oligarchy: 50 Billionaires Who Profit From Today's Climate Crisis

by Victor MenottiFollow for The Durban Daily

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As government officials shadow box at global climate negotiations in Durban, it is increasingly obvious that these people don't call the shots, but that they are, in fact, held hostage from taking strong climate action by billionaires enriched from fossil fuels.
So, who exactly are these fossil fuel billionaires and how did they get so powerful?
A new report released today by the International Forum on Globalization (IFG), called, "Outing the Oligarchy: Billionaires Who Benefit From the Climate Crisis," identifies the world's 50 wealthiest individuals whose investments make them the biggest beneficiaries from climate change and who are, particularly in the case of the United States, financing the influence networks that protect their political and economic power. (Download the complete report here.)
IFG's report comes as global debates intensify on how best to protect the climate and how to counter the corrupting power of extreme wealth over politics. By "following the money," the report draws the links between the two debates and identifies the emerging, ultra-rich tycoons who are deepening the world's climate crisis.
The world's richest corporations and capitalists have been branded by the Occupy Wall Street movement as the "one percent," yet there has been scant attention to the individuals within in the "one percent" who have greatest responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. Little information has been publicly available about the identities of the industrialists, investors and ideologues who are most responsible for the decisions over carbon-intensive activities that drive greenhouse gas emissions far past danger levels.
"Outing the Oligarchy" brings this information to light. The task of calculating carbon decision-making footprints is highly complex. However, IFG's new study is an initial step in the longer-term effort to better understand the roles played by the planet's worst carbon culprits and how they fund sophisticated influence networks over almost all aspects of government policymaking, especially energy.
The report is a Who's Who List' of crony capitalists who have gotten rich by polluting the planet, and now they are plowing their cash back in to prevent any legal protections for the planet and its most vulnerable peoples. Behind each of these billionaires are the stories of countless peoples and places that are being erased from the face of the earth by unregulated greenhouse gas emissions. These climate destroyers must be pulled out of the shadows so that peoples of the world can understand who is responsible for the world's predicament and can figure out the solutions.
"Saving our climate means knowing who is stopping solutions, and the 1 percent have a responsibility to step up and help shift today's paradigm so that our planet stands a chance," says Bill McKibben. "This list helps make it clear why science has been ignored and reason thrown to the wind in the face of the greatest crisis we've ever faced."
Also commenting on the report, IFG board member from India, Dr. Vandana Shiva says "India's Great Oligarchs are exposed in the IFG report for their get-rich-quick gambles to grab more land and resources, which, in turn, concentrates even more political power in fewer hands in the world's largest democracy,'" said co-author and
Dr. Jeffrey Winters, in the politics department at Northwestern University, calculates in his 2011 book, Oligarchy, that wealth in the US is twice as concentrated in the hands of the few at the top today as it was during the Roman Empire. Most Americans are shocked to find out that they live in a society that is vastly more unequal than Rome."


http://prezi.com/6yoqiuovai0b/copy-of-ko...koch-cash/

[Peter Lemkin]

Want Free Bus Tickets to #OWS Events (like Occupy Congress)? Mega Bus Giving Away 200,000 Tickets!

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[Peter Lemkin]

In Crisis, The Rich Get Richer

World Inequality Rises Following Failed Economics

by A.D. McKenzie

PARIS - Mansions on one side of the road, and slums on the other. People queuing for food rations, while others drive by in shiny Land Rovers with tinted windows.
New data for the United States show that the "share of after-tax household income for the top 1 percent more than doubled" from 1979 to 2007, while the share of the "bottom" 20 percent of the population fell from 7 percent to 5 percent. Though varied throughout the world, these inequality statistics pervade and paint a picture of a world in which the rich profit while the poor are left further and further behind. (Image: OECD) These are just some of the sights that have confronted Danielle Nierenberg as she traveled through 30 countries to supervise the Worldwatch Institute's report titled State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet'.
"You can see the stark differences within a single country very easily, and you see it every day," she told IPS. "In Africa it doesn't look like the recession has affected the very wealthy. It has affected poor people the most."
Nierenberg was in Paris this week to launch Comment Nourir 7 Milliards d'Hommes' (How to Feed 7 Billion People), the French edition of the Washington-based think tank's report.
While that publication focuses mostly on agriculture in Africa, its launch coincided with the presentation of a new report Monday by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that spells out the rising gap between rich and poor in the OECD's 34 member states.
Both surveys are a call to governments to take action to alleviate poverty and inequality, and to invest more in people who need assistance, whether in developed or developing countries. The OECD report puts in figures and graphs what is a reality for many people working on the ground in various regions.
Called Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising', the OECD survey finds that the "average income of the richest 10 percent is now about nine times that of the poorest 10 percent" across the organization.
Even in "traditionally egalitarian countries", such as Denmark, Sweden and Germany, the income gap has risen from 5 to 1 in the 1980s to 6 to 1 today. The gap is 10 to 1 in the United Kingdom, Italy, Japan and Korea, and higher (at 14 to 1) in the United States, Israel and Turkey, according to the report.
New data for the United States show that the "share of after-tax household income for the top 1 percent more than doubled" from 1979 to 2007, while the share of the "bottom" 20 percent of the population fell from 7 percent to 5 percent.
"This is one of our most important assessments," said the OECD's Secretary-General Angel Gurria as he launched the report at the organization's headquarters here. "We say divided we stand' because we have grown unequally."
Gurria said that "only a few countries have managed to buck the trend." Income inequality has recently fallen in Chile and Mexico, but in these two countries the incomes of the richest are still more than 25 times those of the poorest, he said.
Outside of the OECD area, income inequality is much higher in some major emerging economies. For instance, although the Brazilian government has taken measures to redistribute wealth, with inequality falling over the past decade, the country's income gap is still 50 to 1, or five times the OECD average, the report says.
"There are countries that are non-OECD members, where a sustained period of strong economic growth has allowed some emerging economies to lift millions of people out of absolute poverty," Gurria told journalists.
"The benefits of strong economic growth, however, have not been evenly distributed. High levels of income inequality have risen further. Among the dynamic emerging economies, only Brazil managed to strongly reduce inequality."
The OECD says that the main reasons for the rising income gaps have been greater inequality in wages and salaries, the reduction in benefits, and cuts in top tax rates for high-earners.
Both Gurria and Nierenberg said separately that the global economic crisis has increased the urgency for governments to take action on these issues.
"The social contract is starting to unravel in many countries," Gurria said. Uncertainty and fears of social decline and exclusion have reached the middle class in many societies. People feel that they are bearing the brunt of a crisis for which they have no responsibility while those on high incomes appear to have been spared."
He said that the OECD's recommendations included increasing marginal tax rates on the rich. "When you're talking about the wealthiest of the wealthy, we're saying that there is room to increase the tax rate," he said in response to a question. "We're recommending increased consumption taxes, increased property taxes and increased taxes on carbon."
He, however, shied away from discussing the OECD's position on the financial transactions tax that has been proposed by many non-governmental organizations as well as some leading economists.
Guillaume Grosso, the director in France of anti-poverty group ONE, said that simply raising the tax rate on the wealthy is only a part of the solution to inequality.
"While some businesses are taxed and those taxes will serve to redistribute the money towards the poor, clearly the financial sector has not been paying its fair share, and some would argue that the financial sector is responsible for the troubles that the world is experiencing now," he told IPS.
"The idea of the FTT for development is very simple you introduce a very small duty on financial transactions. It's relatively painless but it's fair. And it's the first time we are asking for an effort from the financial sector and then we could use this money to fight poverty in the countries that need this assistance the most," he added.
Grosso said that the OECD report has also failed to address the issue of transparency.
"We basically need to know how the state is using the money that it has," he said. "One of the key issues is that very often, and in particular in the poorer countries, it's very difficult to know how the government uses the money. One of the striking examples is Equatorial Guinea in Africa where you have a GDP per capita that is similar to Greece or Portugal and yet two-thirds of the population live on less than one dollar a day."
ONE advocates setting up a legal framework that should be adopted by rich countries so that "we know where their oil and gas companies put their money for instance," Grosso said.
"We want transparency in the way they publish what they pay to governments. This is the kind of thing that the OECD cannot say."
For her part, Nierenberg would also like to see transparency, especially in the way that rich and emerging economies are buying farm properties ("land grabbing") in Africa, increasing poverty and inequality in some countries.
"When food prices have risen so high and people's incomes haven't risen along, you see the effects of that: kids with bloated bellies, all the typical signs of malnutrition and impending famine in ways that you wouldn't have seen maybe five or six years ago," she told IPS.