Air Force to award silver star to U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers..

[Bernice Moore]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/12/18/air...ry-powers/?test=latestnews



Air Force to award silver star to U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers..

[Peter Lemkin]

That's in place of 'sorry' we double-crossed you; led you to be shot down; planted incriminating evidence on you when your body and plane should have been 'clean' - i.e. victim pawn in a cynical cold-war intel game....thanks a lot. :mexican:

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

The corporations that occupy Congress

Dec 20, 2011 10:09 ES


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By David Cay Johnston
The views expressed are his own.

[url=http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/files/2011/12/RTR2V0E4.jpg]

Some of the biggest companies in the United States have been firing workers and in some cases lobbying for rules that depress wages at the very time that jobs are needed, pay is low, and the federal budget suffers from a lack of revenue.
Last month Citizens for Tax Justice and an affiliate issued "Corporate Taxpayers and Corporate Tax Dodgers 2008-10″. It showed that 30 brand-name companies paid a federal income tax rate of minus 6.7 percent on $160 billion of profit from 2008 through 2010 compared to a going corporate tax rate of 35 percent. All but one of those 30 companies reported lobbying expenses in Washington.
Another report, by Public Campaign, shows that 29 of those companies spent nearly half a billion dollars over those three years lobbying in Washington for laws and rules that favor their interests. Only Atmos Energy, the 30th company, reported no lobbying.
Public Campaign replaced Atmos with Federal Express, the package delivery company that paid a smidgen of tax $37 million, or less than one percent of the $4.2 billion in profit it reported in 2008 through 2010.
For the amount spent lobbying, the companies could have hired 3,100 people at $50,000 for wages and benefits to do productive work.
The report "For Hire: Lobbyists or the 99 percent" says that while shedding jobs, the 30 companies are "spending millions of dollars on Washington lobbyists to stave off higher taxes or regulations."
These and other companies have access to lawmakers and regulators that are unavailable to ordinary Americans.
CALL CONGRESS
Doubt that? Dial the Capitol switchboard at 1 (202) 224-3121, ask for your representative's office and request a five-minute audience, in person, at the lawmaker's convenience back in the home district.
In more than a decade of lectures recommending this, I have yet to have a single person email me (see address to the right) about having scored a private meeting with the representative called.
Corporations have vast resources to pour into ensuring access resources that expand when little or no taxes are paid on profits thanks to rules they previously lobbied into law.
Companies form nonprofit trade associations, hire former lawmakers and agency staffers, and have jobs to dole out to lawmakers after they leave office and to friends and family while they're in office. Thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, corporations can now pour unlimited sums into influencing elections. So can unions, but they are financial pipsqueaks compared to companies.
Then there are political action committees, or PACs, to finance campaigns as well as donations by executives and major shareholders.
Combine all this and you have a powerful formula for making rules that favor corporate interests over human interests, something that the framers of the U.S. Constitution understood more than two centuries ago.
James Madison wrote disapprovingly in 1792 of "a government operating by corrupt influence, substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty" where eventually "the terror of the sword, may support a real domination of the few, under an apparent liberty of the many."
FEARS COME TRUE
The late U.S. president's fears have come to life. For swords, just substitute police with rubber bullets, batons and pepper spray at Occupy demonstrations, including perfectly peaceful ones.
Company reports to shareholders show that among the 30 companies in the Public Campaign report, the 10 firms that spent the most on lobbying during the same three-year period fired more than 93,000 American workers.
Those firings took place in an economy that had five million fewer people with any work in 2010 than in 2008.

All those firings mean higher costs to taxpayers to support those unable to find work, including the more than 4.2 million Americans who are now persevering by applying for jobs after more than a year. Millions more have given up and are no longer counted among the unemployed.
Federal Express spent $25 million lobbying to protect a rule that makes it virtually impossible for its express delivery workers to unionize. That's 67 percent of what it paid in taxes.
FedEx says it was "educating lawmakers" about a proposal "that would cripple competition in the express delivery industry and hinder our nation's future economic success."
The Teamsters, who represent drivers at United Parcel Service, say FedEx was protecting a special interest rule that shorts workers. UPS pays its unionized drivers 53 percent to 104 percent more per hour than FedEx does.
The United States already ranks second among modern nations, just behind South Korea, in the share of its workers in low-wage jobs while too many companies lobby for ever lower taxes, ever smaller wages and ever fewer worker rights to protect the mighty torrents of greenbacks flowing into their coffers. A better balance would make America better off.

[Peter Lemkin]

Democratic Socialists of America march on the first day of the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City. DSA's membership has grown 60 percent since 2003. (Photo by David Shankbone)

Views » November 7, 2011

Let's Talk Democratic Socialism, Already

After 30 years of failed neoliberalism, we need a real alternative.
BY Maria Svart Unfettered capitalism is inherently undemocratic--but human action can significantly democratize our political system.

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." With all the right-wing hoopla about how President Barack Obama is waging class war, you might be surprised to learn that Warren Buffet said these words in 2006. The billionaire investor was acknowledging 30 years of a widening income gapbut I'll go a step further. I believe that unfettered capitalism is inherently undemocratic and that human action can significantly democratize our political system. That's why I'm a socialist.
Corporate America's assaults on working peopleseeking profits through offshoring jobs, busting unions, paying politicians to slash corporate taxes and deregulating the bankshave ruined our economy. Meanwhile, millions of workers have been thrown from their jobs while unions are scapegoated for manufactured budget crises at the state and local levels.
The accident of birth should not determine the course of a person's life. Government expenditures are an indication of a society's priorities, and it is both economically and morally imperative to provide a safety net for those who suffer the most in a downturn. Without massive public investment in healthcare, education, infrastructure and green jobswhich could be funded by progressive taxation of income along with a tax on financial transactionsour future is bleak. With high unemployment and anemic demand, the economy will continue to limp forward. Those lucky enough to have work will likely remain afraid to agitate for better conditions.
Right now, we need more jobs and better pay for less work. In the long term, ordinary people need more powerthrough unions, worker councils and seats on the board in the workplace, and in politics, through a public campaign finance system that provides sufficient exposure to all candidates. We need a political economy that allows everyone space and time for personal growth and thoughtful participation in the decisions that profoundly impact their lives.
I feel so strongly about these values that I recently quit my job as an organizer for SEIU to become the national director of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which has its roots in both the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs, Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington and the New American Movement, a nonsectarian organization that grew out of the American New Left and whose founders were instrumental in establishing In These Times back in 1976.
DSA's strategy is to push American politics to the left by strengthening social movements such as Occupy Wall Street. Movements are the only force capable of making elites respond to popular demands. That doesn't mean we ignore elections. Among other races, the organization is looking forward to helping socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) win re-election.
I was raised in a union family that directly benefited from the kind of government programs that DSA fights to protect and expandlike the GI Bill. As a bi-racial woman, I experienced oppression and learned that the world isn't fair, despite what I was taught in school about the American Dream. When I attended a DSA youth section event at the University of Chicago, I realized that the patterns I had seen all my life signal structural problems. Capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacythey are linked structures of oppression that must be dismantled.
Analyzing these structures is critical to forging a political strategy to challenge corporate power. But doing so is not the only reason I decided to become DSA's national director. Some may argue that I should work in a more mainstream organization and "get more done," but without a clear alternative to the Tea Party narrative, national politics will continue to slide to the right. In the current climate, even the most moderate reforms are red-baited. We need a strong socialist organization in the United States to counter Republicans' (and often Democrats') dangerous buffoonery.
As 30 years of neoliberal economic destruction come home to roost, more and more people are beginning to question the wisdom of capitalism and becoming open to socialismDSA's membership has grown 60 percent since 2003. I believe that someday soon American politicians will stop fearing the s-word, and start enacting systemic change.