Occupy Wall Street:: Astro-Turf Rallies?

Is Occupy Wall Street (OWS) the work of the Serbian contract revolution organizers, the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies [C.A.N.V.A.S] and Otpor!? Is this the elite power structure replacing one corrupt system with another, even more corrupt system? Are they channeling the energy of a fed-up American public to nowhere? To usher in an even more destructive banking system?

The mainstream media's coverage of this "occupation", the lack of severe injury and/or fatalities, President Obama's endorsement, the lack of clear demands, and the services of a glitzy public relations firm makes it hard to believe otherwise.

Read more...

Read more...

Too Above the Law to Fail.

The phrase "Too big to fail" is hogwash. It was coined in order to instill fear into the public. Why? To avoid backlash when the government claims they must rescue the elitist banks and corporations from the consequences of their criminal behavior.

Do you think pressure and protest from American citizens will change anything? Well, if enough people participate...Hell yeah! And, by enough, you mean? Oh, maybe...100 million people.

Here are some people who are starting the ball rolling.

On behalf of Grass Roots Organizing (GRO) in conjunction with National People's Action (NPA), as many as 900 clergy, homeowners and union members from across Ohio and the Midwest gathered to protest the JPMorgan Chase shareholders meeting at corporate park outside Columbus, Ohio as part of a national campaign called  Showdown in America



And in Colorado, a group of people targeted Bank of America.

Stapel bought her home in Johnstown about six years ago while she had a good job at Colorado State University.

Since then, she said, she was struck with a disability, is no longer able to work and is burning through her savings and an inheritance to pay her loan.

She has tried to get her loan modified but says Bank of America has given her the runaround and claims never to have received documentation that she said she has proof she sent.

“I want to pay them back,” she said, and just needs help.

And up until a protest in the rain Wednesday, she says the company did not respond to her requests.

Links:

Foreclosing on Ohio

Read more...

Tea Party: Secretly Guided to Serve Corporate Elites.

The documentary film (Astro)Turf Wars: How Corporate America is Faking a Grassroots Revolution exposes The Tea Party - fake grassroots activism organized from the top down - and other corporate deception for what it is.

In Summer 2009, something stirred in America. After Barack Obama and a Democratic congress swept to power promising a new era of hope and change, out of nowhere a citizens protest movement emerged that threatened to derail their agenda. Was this uprising the epitome of grassroots democracy? Or was it, as some said, an example of ‘astroturfing’? That is, the creation of fake grassroots (ie. Astroturf: get it?) groups, designed to put corporate messages in the mouths of seemingly independent citizens.

Fascinated by this concept of astroturfing and curious to find out if these accusations were true, Australian filmmaker Taki Oldham hopped on a plane to investigate. Going undercover as a curious onlooker, his month-long journey took him over 5000 miles, 6 states and right into the heart of the ‘American Dream’. His three areas of investigation were:

(Astro) Turf Wars trailer from (astro)turf wars on Vimeo.

Read more...

Tea Party 'Astroturf Front for Corporate Agenda' Movement Gets Richer.

An anonymous donor contributed $1 million to the Tea Party Patriots, and the Tea Party's national coordinators who intend to use the funds to get out the vote for the Nov election.

Conveniently, the Tea Party Patriots are organized as a social welfare organization, [501(c)4 of the tax code], therefore not regulated by federal finance campaign laws and not required to disclose funding sources.

"As long as the Tea Party Patriots do not mention candidates' names in their material or explicitly advocate for or against a specific candidates' election, they don't have to meet federal requirements to disclose their donors.[...] There certainly seems to be an increase in the use of 501(c)4s to launder political donations. Big donors find them attractive because they can give money without getting their names in public." -- Paul Ryan, an expert at the Campaign Legal Center, a non-partisan watchdog group that monitors election law.

However, despite the anonymity of the donor, thanks to Jane Mayer's article in The New Yorker, Covert Operations , it's fairly safe to assume that the incredibly rich Koch brothers, of Koch Industries, an oil refiner and the nation’s second largest private company with about $100 billion in annual revenue, and who are tied at #24 on Forbes top billionaire's list  are behind most large donations.

Many of the groups on the right receive funding from a network of influential conservative foundations, including those connected to the Koch brothers of Wichita, Kan., who run the largest private energy firm in the United States. Records show that the Koch-connected Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, for example, has given $3.1 million to Americans for Prosperity, a group that has taken a leading role in organizing "tea party protests" and other anti-reform efforts.

Links:

'Shadow RNC' American Crossroads Raises Millions in August from Wealthy Individuals, Corporations - American Crossroads is a tax-exempt group organized under section 527 of U.S. tax code, created to primarily influence elections. In July, the group registered with the Federal Election Commission as an independent expenditure-only committee and now reports its income and expenditures to the FEC on a monthly basis

Shadow RNC

Read more...

Become a Market Force: Move Your Money

California attorney, Ben Pavone is fed up. He says he's not going to pay his credit card bill until Bank of America lowers his interest rate and hikes his credit limit. He claims Bank of America raised his interest rate and lowered his spending limit to just above his balance without explanation. I can certainly relate as the same exact thing happened to me, and I'm sure to millions of other people as well. No, Mr. Pavone is not the only one who is fed up and he's not the only one taking action.

The campaign to move money from giant banks to local community banks and credit unions is spreading quickly. But not all community banks are risk free. Some of them got involved in the same risky behavior that took down some of the biggest banks. MoveYourMoney.info provides a zip-code tool (IRABankRatings.com) which sifts through every active bank and thrift running calculations to identify the very top of the industry performers so you can visit these banks.

The big banks on Wall Street, propped up by taxpayer money and government guarantees, have had a record year, making record profits while returning to the highly leveraged activities that brought our economy to the brink of disaster. In a slap in the face to taxpayers, they have also cut back on the money they are lending, even though the need to get credit flowing again was one of the main points used in selling the public the bank bailout. But since April, the Big Four banks -- JP Morgan/Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- all of which took billions in taxpayer money, have cut lending to businesses by $100 billion.

"Community" credit unions are another great alternative. Most are open to anyone who lives in the community, and they offer free checking, great service and will reduce that ever-growing anxiety about gratuitous fees. Here's the link to check on credit unions: National Credit Union Administration (NCUA)

The elimination of usury laws in America initiated an era of deregulation that allowed financial markets to run wild, leading to today's economic crisis. The Industrial Areas Foundation started the “10% Is Enough" campaign, listing four reasons why interest rates should be capped at 10%.

1) Moral and civic prohibitions against usury stretch back deep into our religious and national history. Our prophets and founding fathers made the clear case long before us that usury is patently wrong, against God, and against our national interest. From the time of Hammurabi to the Carter administration, usury was illegal. Modern practices of usury are an aberrant blip in history.

2) Our people are hurting because of crushing debt loads exacerbated by exorbitant interest rates – in the form of high credit card premiums, payday loans, banking and check-cashing fees, sub-prime mortgages, rapid-refund tax return schemes, car-title scams, and other practices that seek to generate income off of financial misfortune.

3) The elimination of usury laws in America from 1978-1980 ushered in an era of deregulation that allowed financial markets to run wild, accelerating the present economic crisis.

4) The elimination of usury laws helped shift the investment of American capital and talent away from manufacturing and material innovation and into an unproductive financial sector based on trading paper rather than producing long-term wealth. That shift has damaged other sectors of the economy, decimated America’s labor force and weakened America’s position in the world.

What we need now more than thousands of pages of new regulations, or the sour faces of executives forced to reduce their eight-figure salaries to a mere seven, is a 10% cap on interest rates. Why 10%? Because 10% is enough. Ten percent puts proportion and equity into the relationship between the lender and the borrower. Ten percent restores our capacity to form right relationships.

Did you know that Bank of America's executive bonuses alone could have paid the entire foreclosure crisis? Did you know that Bank of America, after receiving bailout money courtesy of we, the people, adjusted only 100 mortgages in total? Did you know that the banks are not living up to their end of the bargain by refusing to lend to worthy small businesses and individuals? What choice do we have?

Read more...

Freecycle Means to Give as Good as You Get.

Or, one man's junk is another man's jewels or... (insert stupid cliché)

Anyway, Freecycle is a a grassroots, nonprofit effort to keep the good stuff out of our landfills. Give and GET stuff free in your own town and help yourself as well as the environment. Freecycle is made up of 4,343 groups with 4,979,633 members across the planet.

Free is the operative word...membership is free, and everything posted must be FREE, legal and appropriate for all ages.

Make up a user name, submit your email address, join the groups closest to you and you're good to go.

Needless to say, please take reasonable measures to protect your safety and privacy when posting to the list or participating in an exchange. By joining the list, you agree to hold neither the list owners and moderators nor anyone affiliated with Freecycle.org responsible or liable for any circumstance resulting from a Freecycle-related exchange or communication.

Read more...

Big Business at the Expense of the Citizen

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." - Adam Smith

When President Reagan took office in 1980, market regulation gradually started to fade away and Reagan's interpretation of Adam Smith's "invisible hand" took hold. I say interpretation because I don't think Adam Smith would agree with what eventually became Reaganomics. Ronald's unbridled capitalism encouraged "bigger is better" instead of encouraging smaller and more diverse enterprises where the average person could compete without the huge unregulated corporations crushing their chance of success.

Whereas Adam Smith's "invisible hand" naively assumed a fairly level playing field, Ronald Reagan's "invisible hand" eliminated the playing field, entirely, making it impossible for average Americans to find it, let alone compete. While hopeful unfortunates, lacking the wealth and power - mostly due to accident of birth - wander aimlessly looking for the arena to engage in this "fair" contest for the "American Dream", President Reagan talks about, those already born into the American Dream continue to manipulate the "invisible hand" of unbridled capitalism making sure the hopeful unfortunates never become contenders. In other words, the poor were and are forced to subsidize the wealthy.

People were persuaded to vote against their self-interest, thanks to Ronald Reagan's ability to "communicate" or not, and market fundamentalism, laissez-faire, supply side economics became the dominant ideology of the 1980s and continues to rule throughout the first decade of the first millennium.

The North American economy has become more monopolistic than at any time since WWII. Economic power has become so concentrated through the consolidation of many sectors of the economy by way of mergers and acquisitions that it has become extremely difficult for Mr. Average citizen to influence or impact our socioeconomic conditions with the exception of as a consumer. Government has had no choice but to bend to the will of these powerful industrial interests...the definition of corpocracy.

If not for the advancement of technology, the Internet, the ACLU, and other similar efforts that contribute to preventing our society from deteriorating into a dictatorial system of control, the fascist seeds planted thirty years ago would have sprouted into a fascist harvest by now.

President Bush's time in office is almost up, and many of us are breathing a sigh of relief however he has not only planted brand new fascist seeds, but has made sure the ground is more fertile than ever for fascism to emerge...all it will take is wrong leader and the right circumstances.

Huey Long, one of America's most corrupt politicians, was asked if America would ever see fascism. "Yes, but we will call it anti-fascism."

Read more...