What Inspiring words will New Jersey’s Chris Christie offer the 9/11 first responders?

New Jersey firemen and policemen protesting thetenth aniversary  9/11 speaker



Rumor has it that Chris Christie is suppose to be on the platform for the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I can’t wait when he tells the listening public that the people who ran into the twin towers should have been paying more for their health care and shouldn’t have been allowed to collectively bargain. That must have been what those people sacrificed for. One wonders what Chris Christie did to help anyone on that day?

Meet The GE/Comcast/Press

David Gregory knows there’s three things driving the debt up: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It’s funny GE has nothing to do with any of them. Gregory goes on to emphatically state “we” all agree on that. That’s nice of him to declare that I am so categorically in agreement with him. As a matter of fact Social Security makes money and the politicians keep stealing it so of course it has to be killed but why would Gregory let the truth get in the way of a good story. As just an average American, who Gregory claims to be channeling, for a second I felt that the debt could be related to the fifty-nine wars America is currently involved in and the unnecessary crap that we keep buying from GE to fight these wars. Nobody on the roundtable of “experts” bothered asked Gregory about that though. They just let him babble on about it. According to Gregory and his “experts”, it is “Code Red.”

Probably the closest anyone came to telling the truth was a tea party representative from Idaho, whose viewpoints were brought on the show to show how fair and balanced NBC was as well as to show how nutty anyone who disagreed with the standard corporate line, they were peddling, were. In other words don’t disagree with the people who created this mess, when they’re busy trying to steal some of the last public money in captivity. It’s all the powerless far left and far right’s fault, which was said over and over again to make sure you got the point. It certainly isn’t the fault of the people who have been running the country for the last thirty years.

Follow the money, they’re putting out triggers on these bills so that no one will be responsible when they kill these last few public benefits. Instead, something will happen, everyone will just blame the other side and everyone can keep their jobs. Follow their actions now and if anyone touches these programs that have been paid with money money coming out of your paychecks then throw the bums out. Make them get a job in the thriving economy that they‘ve created.

The last thing Meet The Press did was put Jim Cramer from “Mad Money” - a show that exploits America’s low attention span with its desire to get rich quickly - on the roundtable of “experts.” Cramer has been right about almost nothing since he’s been on television but he’s even more connected to greater “experts” and it impossible to be so wrong that you can’t be on NBC/GE/Comcast’s Meet The Press‘s roundtable.

You wonder why America is in the mess it is just look at its news sources: GE, Viacom, Disney, and Time Warner. There’s also factually challenged “Fox” which doesn‘t even bother start with facts as a jumping off point.

Was the debt limit raised or would you like more crazy bread with that?

Wall Street is not happy with the US congress. One wonders if they can just fire the US representatives or do the have to wait four year to get rid of them. What kind of representational democracy is it when the rich can’t fire the people’s representatives.

Today the US unemployment dropped but there was no mention as to why. Did the people stop looking for work? Has the US economy started hiring. CNN = no explanation. Instead we get a 20 minute expose on Papa John’s pizza that tells us nothing but the fact that a number pizzas were delivered to Capital Hill is the excuse that is given as to why this twenty minute commercial is so important. Maybe CNN

I was just wondering

Why is it when you give a tax cut to a poor man it destroys his desire to work but when you give it to a mega billionaire it incentives him to work even harder just wondering? Oh I forgot that’s because they’re the job creators who never really create any jobs.

America's Greatest Generation Meets its Stupidest

Just a thought wall to wall about budget default crisis and CNN as a conduit to what people are talking about. And they’re right it’s really what the people on CNN are talking about. It would be nice if CNN spent nearly as much time talking about how people are wondering why Bill Gates and Warren Buffet need another tax cut? How dare the politicians not cut some of the bloated military budget? How dare the politicians keep calling upon other peoples children to fight endless wars that they don’t have the money to pay for? Apparently, CNN isn’t talking to the same people I am.

The wonderful thing about the U.S. is this generation loves to talk endlessly about the greatest generation, even as they destroy everything that that generation stood for. And what better way to show your respect for your elders than by destroying the retirement program that was set up for them in old age.

Oh what a wonderful cruise it's been

According to our tour guide, “Grand Turk has 5000 people living on the island. If one cruise ship comes in they outnumber the people on the island. On the day we were there, there were three Carnival Cruise ships were there full of people with money to spend. The cruise companies would certainly have a great deal of influence on the local governments because they can either turn on or turn off the spigot that drives their economy. When I return to US I do intend to look at some of the tax policies of these cruise companies.

CNN might try something different like playing it straight

CNN/Time Warner seems to be undergoing a nervous breakdown as we speak. The US might default on its debt sinking the whole world into Armageddon, the banks would melt, and the earth will open up at Wall Street and start swallowing up the United States. It brings to mind a little of coverage that proceeded the US taxpayers writing the banks a blank check, with a suggestion attached to it that the banks should pay us back if they felt like it. One wonders what role CNN is actually playing in these crises: someone who reports them or someone who helps create them.

One only wishes that CNN brought the same sense of urgency when it came to their prolonged unemployed viewers having their unemployment checks cut off. Or when their elderly viewers had their monthly income threatened but when that happened you were much more likely to get cold numerical analysis of the best way to “fix” the economy, from the most trusted name in news, and less likely to get hyperbole. One has to wonder at what point CNN’s business side has leaked into its news gathering division making its coverage nearly totally self-serving.

Here’s a suggestion for CNN try playing it straight. Report what both sides are saying. Then report the drama as it really happens and not as you imagine it would happen. As a matter of fact that’s probably good advice for the media in general and it would hold up in any event. The author apologizes that he has been on a cruise with CNN being one of the few channels he gets. At least he is thankful he does not get Fox as that would suggest he has not lead a virtuous life

One more post from HLN/CNN news

Is the government going too far handing out tickets to people who have saggy pants? This is news I want to know.

What happens when I turn to Time Warner and CNN for my news

Michael Moore famously said that “the US should be required to know where a country is before they bomb it.” The question is how is the American supposed to learn about it when the media places no value on news, but values the trivial over the substantial.

Where England’s BBC, “government television”, might focus an in-depth five or ten minute block on some obscure African country. We don’t worry about such things in the US. We don’t know anything and our press works hard not to trouble us with more facts than we need to know. One look at the CNN overseas shows that the network turns out one programming for Europeans whose intellect they respect and then it presents a localized watered down stupider version for the Americans.

This is just a random sampling of the television line-up for HLN, presented by CNN the most trusted name in news.

1. A polygamist who had been locked up for marrying a nine year old bride. And the struggles his former wives have with leaving the cult.

2. The Norwegian massacre. I‘m still puzzled how a real news story made it way on this channel.

3. Jesse James, whoever he is the gunfighter or Sandra Bullock‘s ex, is not getting married.

4. Octomum is surviving without a nanny taking care of all 14 kids herself.

5. Arnold and Maria’s son is injured on a boogie board. Recaps of who’s tweeting who and where. And who is serving whom papers. Arnold looks petty big mistake going into the divorce settlement.

I shut off the television.

6. Half an hour later Casey Anthony. Narcissistic syndrome. Is she unemployable? The newscaster talk about not understanding why anyone’s interested in Casey Anthony as they talk endlessly about her.

Come election time CNN will gladly help inform you on who to vote, as they done such a fine job giving you the news that matters to this point. They’ve been busy reporting the horse race from the first day of the Obama administration. Not only that but they got Nancy Grace too.

Obama calls out Boehner for not taking a stand against his own party

You thought you'd never see it hear but thank God for John Boehner. Boehner may be dead wrong in what he believes but he doesn appear to believe in something. Obama was very forceful at calling out Boehner for not betraying his own party as Obama seems hell bent on doing. No matter what it takes Obama seems hell bent on selling out Social Security, Medicare and Medicade and remind me again we are voting for him for what?

Overheard conversation

My friend Amy at a writer's conference, "Everyone always says that if only the public knew the things I had to do for a living."

It is LPs goal to make sure the public does know and ignorance is not an excuse.

Privitization

Privatization. What is it? The government can’t longer afford do anything so they outsource services to the lowest bidder. Education is outsourced. Jails are outsourced. In Indiana even the toll roads have been outsourced , the state selling it for next to nothing to a private unelected company who then jacks up the tolls and fleece the people who the politicians supposedly represent.

I’m reminded of a story I saw on one of those PBS science shows of a party of nineteenth century British sailors whose boat was stranded in the northern Canadian ice. For some reason the party abandoned ship and began dragging the captain’s desk for miles in the wrong direction away from the place where they could be rescued. One sailor died and was buried in the ice. The party was eventually rescued. More than a hundred years later the dead sailor’s body, still preserved in the ice, was found. He was exhumed and the scientists found traces of lead in his body. They went back in the records and found that the company that had outfitted the expedition had never done so before but they had received the contract to do so because they were the lowest bidder. The director of the show surmised that the company had accidentally given the crew lead poisoning.

This was just another case of public servants hiring companies that don’t necessarily serve the public well. They get away with it more easily when the people they are serving are powerless and unimportant like: the elderly, children, the mentally ill, or minorities - all of which fall into the category of others whose problems people continue to want to bury because it distracts them from the lives they’d like to lead.

Years ago: the state of Massachusetts realized how expensive running services could be and they gradually began jettisoning them onto the lowest bidder. They began to take bids from whoever said they could do a job better, for cheaper. Once the state learned that a company could do it cheaper, they lost interest in whether they were doing it better. Money was there for a public/private partnership to divvy up and I don’t think Massachusetts is unique.

The way kids are treated in these programs is often deplorable. It isn’t that so much of the public hates kids. They actually probably love their own kids very much. It’s that too many of them hate other peoples’ kids and they don’t see why they have to pay for them either.

What is privatization? It is undemocratic and it basically says that we can no longer afford to treat our employees or our clients respectfully. Privatization is the one smart, usually politically connected, person making mega dollars by hiring a bunch of idealistic idiots, who are willing to undersell their labor. Those workers will tell themselves that they’re doing it for the children or the elderly because they can‘t face the fact that they are just really another commodity.

Privatization is the state withdrawing from responsibility into a world in which no one is responsible for anything. One kid gets killed in a program and everyone points fingers at everyone else who might be responsible. In the end what we are teaching the next generation, that unless things directly concern us, no is responsible for anything. It’s always someone else’s problem. Maybe we should be teaching them a different lesson.

The Nursing Home Business: It's Just Business

I first heard about the problems in nursing homes from Amy. I was not surprised that they wanted cheap labor. I was only surprised at how systematic it was. I began hearing stories of nursing homes systematically bringing people over from other countries to get the cheapest labor. If you want information go to the source. Amy Burle reports:

It’s Not Personal, it’s Business
I spent three years working in various nursing homes and found that the elderly warehousing business was at best disheartening and at worse criminal. Make no mistake about it; this is a business like any other. The top priority is to turn a profit. If the poor old people are well taken care of it is a rare and happy accident.

The marketing is good. Old people playing bingo and enjoying each other’s company. Movie night and pretty pictures on the wall. Happy health care workers who wake each morning ready to lovingly attend the residents in their care.

The reality is something else. Sure, there’s bingo and pretty pictures and movies in the day room. But the staff is ill educated and jaded by too much work and too little time to perform it adequately. It’s a tough task to do what they do. I commend them for trying and don’t get me wrong—most of them do care. But too much work is placed on too few people and at the end of the day, you go home knowing that you tried, but failed.

When you tour any facility they are likely to take you to the rehab unit, where the most able and aware residents are staying and the better CNAs and nurses are working. They don’t’ show you the wing where the rooms are filled with totally incapacitated people who are left for the better part of the day to stew in their own filth. Why is this?

Two reasons.

1. In order to be profitable, the facility pays its employees as little as possible for the most possible work it can pile on each person per state requirements.
And
2. In order to be profitable, the facility pays its employees as little as possible for the most possible work it can pile on each person per state requirements.But don’t hate the worker—hate the system. I’ve been a nursing home employee and I know how hard they work, how little they are paid, and how frustrated they are. I know they try. And when a resident passes on, they mourn them too. I’ve cried when a cherished resident died, I’ve fought with my boss for better work conditions; I’ve tried to shed some light on what actually goes down. Yet nothing changed.

I hope for the sake of those poor warehoused souls, that one day it will.

John Nichols discusses Alec: The people Who'd LikeTo Kill Collective Bargaining In The Midwest

This is some of leading companies in the country who don't think any organization should have the right to say no to them. Look back at the archives.

Is New York The Most American City?

I love New York. I’m just down here for a couple of days before a cruise. New York is truly a Mecca of capitalism, real capitalism. Forget about the crony capitalism that takes place daily between Wall Street and Washington. There is individual convenience stores and restaurants that are owned by thousands of individual owners. Even people running the hot dog carts have gone into business for themselves. Despite how expensive New York is. These small places have food that isn’t outrageously expensive and it has a wide variety of ethnic food that other parts of America can only dream of. There seems to be a good restaurant on every street corner: Italian, Chinese, Indian, Moroccan, Ethiopian, kosher, El Al, or delicatessens.

For some reason Americans might love the idea of New York, remember GW Bush and Rudy Giuliani 911 everything changed, but they seem to hate actual New York. They view it as America’s Sodom and Gomorrah and probably in part it’s because of the numbers of foreigners that live in the city. The New Yorkers could not hope to round up all foreigners because really where would they begin. In much of the rest of the country they talk about their great love capitalism even as their lives are controlled by the big box stores. When it came to putting a mosque near ground zero it wasn’t the New Yorkers who seemed to be making a ruckus out it but more often it was people from Kansas or Alabama who often had never set foot in New York and who lived miles away from anything a terrorist would want to blow up. New York is truly the heart of America in its best and worst. It is a place of survivors. It is loud and brash. It is America.

Republicans show the art of compromising

I like the part when Boener kicked sand in Obama's face while compromising.

Sanders calls for primary challenge for Obama

Couldn't agree more. If you don't represent you there you don't deserve to get their votes.

The White House signals that a compromise is still possible

The Democrats continue to just look for some Republicans to surrender to. They are willing to lean over 95% to meet in the middle.

USuncut heats up the pressure on FedEX despite the high Boston temperatures

Us uncut take over a fedex

According the USuncut

Set up a "preschool" inside FedEx, in protest of cuts to teacher training! Pretty funny to see the teamster dudes from Brockton sitting indian style, coloring in the "FedUp" logo with crayons. :)

According to LP's records, actually open secrets, John McCain did find a little loose change 130,000 dollars worth to hand over to John McCain. Apparently, John McCain does so much more for America as a senator from Arizona then the person teaching your kid.

Some common sense advice from Buzzflash that I don't see happening

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
BuzzFlash has suggested before that savings begin at home - and if that's the case, why doesn't Congress cut its pay, raise its portion of health care insurance premiums, cut back its staffs and traveling expenses and shave down its cushy retirement packages?
This is common sense. The euphemism of "shared sacrifice" has been circulating around the media. Of course, a Master of the Universe on Wall Street staying at a $2,000-a-night exclusive hotel suite in Paris instead of a $3,000 suite - well, that's not equal to the "shared sacrifice" of a senior citizen having to cut back to two meals a day due to Social Security reductions. That is what is called a false equivalency.

Monty Python the right attitude - While I didn't vote for you

Dennis

Who are the Britons?

We all are.

Doesn't sound like much of a system for government

Great Matt Taibbi article. Federal Government actually thinking of giving some of America's richest corporations with a tax holiday

I concur with Matt Taibbi where is the outrage.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/22-14

Showing my outrage weeks earlier

"Cheating" Chancellor Michelle Rhee supports anti-union Tennessee teacher bill

The only thing that is unclear is did the Superintendent of Atlanta who cheated supports this bill as well. Rumor has it that four out of five cheating chancellors support this bill.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/20/996599/-Michelle-Rhee-praises-Tennessee-legislatures-anti-teacher-bill?via=blog_1

Latest On Debt Ceiling. Leader of "Surrendering Democrats" Obama just eager to surrender to someone

Perhaps next time he'll  wait until he sees the  Republicans before he surrenders to them, but I'm not sensing it.

A Look Back At NAFTA at eighteen and what happened to legislatures who voted to destroy half the labor force

US Going Out Of Business

It was only eighteen years ago that the US government signed away about half the jobs in the US economy through the North American free trade agreement. It was largely considered a success by corporate America and its five news delivery megaphones (Disney, Viacom, GE/Comcast, News Corp and Time Warner); largely not, by the people who work for a living or took a huge pay cut in the post-NAFTA economy or any of their zero news delivery outlets. It accelerated the transformation of the US from a country of workers who were paid livable wages; into one that merely shops, and uses credit cards to attain more than they can afford. NAFTA is a story with no heroes or villains as both Republicans and Democrats linked arms with big business at the expense of the American electorate. It is a story still going forward as many of these same politicians seek to destroy the other half of the economy with their union stripping measures.

NAFTA created many jobs, as trade increased exports under NAFTA from $306 to $621 billion a year in the first ten years. In the US exports went up from $142 billion to $263 billion a year during the same time period. The growth in exports is usually where the pro-NAFTA forces tend to want to end the conversation. What they choose to ignore is the import side of the equation. According to international economist Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, a labor backed think tank based in Washington D.C. “That’s like counting only deposits and not withdrawals in your checking account balance.” (Northwest labor press 12/19/2003)

Back in 1993 pro-NAFTA forces used the potential of job growth from exports to sell the American public on this policy. In 1993, Time-Warner played an active role in the NAFTA heist offering up their air waves for vice-president Al Gore to take apart eccentric Ross Perot, and his characterization of NAFTA as being “a giant sucking sound” of US jobs leaving for Mexico, on national television. Time-Warner allowed Perot enough time for the Americans to view him as extreme on television and then the combined US media megaphone shut off any anti-NAFTA viewpoints while playing up how crazy Perot was. The one problem was Perot turned out to be right and the combined US political and business community lied to the American people. It wouldn’t be the last time it would happen.

Gore and Perot on Larry King live

Currently the Economic Policy Institute estimates that NAFTA has cost the United States 682,000 jobs. The trade agreement made it easier for trade and investment to cross the borders but it didn’t allow for the free flow of labor.  Perhaps one of the most dramatic things was that before 1993 the US had a $1.6 million dollar trade surplus over Mexico. By 1997, the US had a $16.6 billion deficit to Mexico. Today, it hovers around $97.2 deficits to Mexico. In fact last year, due to growth in the Mexican auto exports to the United States, Mexico created more automotive jobs than the entire US auto industry. (Huffington Post 5/12/11)

Like always the US public would be made to settle for concrete job losses while being promised retraining and potential jobs in the future. The hardest hit US industries have been textiles and electronics. Both California and Texas has been hit very hard from jobs lost to its southern neighbor. The former heart of the US automotive industry: Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky have also been devastated by NAFTA as well. (Ibid) Local communities have been devastated. The US government put forward a program to re-train workers for the post-NAFTA economy. The program would end in 2003 without the jobs ever coming back or new ones appearing. 

NAFTA was also sold to the Americans as being a way to stop the flow of illegal Mexican immigrants to the United States, because of their homelands prosperity. This didn’t happen either. During the first ten years of NAFTA, Mexico created 500,000 manufacturing jobs while they lost 1.3 million agricultural jobs as local Mexican farmers were often in competition with large US agribusinesses. What NAFTA largely did was depress wages of workers in all three countries.

Clinton At NAFTA signing. One wonders what role this played in denying his wife the nomination.

So what happened to these brave American representatives that cast their votes for a bill that killed half the economy? In 2008, if president Barrack Obama had not been nominated by his party the election would have been between John McCain, a guy who voted for a bill that would cost the country almost three quarter of million jobs, against the wife of the guy who signed the bill. In the senate, before the last election twelve of the senators who helped past the job killing bill still retained their jops. Two others Arizona’s Jon Kyle and Illinois Dick Durbin who had voted for the bill in the House of Representatives had been upgraded to the senate. At least five senators who helped pass the bill no longer take indirect payments from companies, through campaign contributions, but are now directly on their pay role as lobbyists. One, Phil Gramm, was held up as the financial guru for John McCain presidency. Another, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, showed so much character that he twice flipped parties, changing believes to match his current allegiances. Another job killing senator was Alan Simpson whose work laid the ground work for him being assigned to protect the electorate’s social security payments. Showing that if you achieve a certain level it is almost impossible to do a bad enough job to fail.

In the House of Representatives out of 234 cast their votes for NAFTA 43 of them have left to become lobbyists. Twenty one of them still hold seats in the house, including both the speaker of the house John Boenher and the minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Another one casting a vote was Newt Gingrich who was forced out of the house of ethics violations, before becoming a permanent potential presidential candidate as well as an ongoing guest on a wide range of corporate “news/opinion” shows. Also voting for the job killing bill was Dick Armey, a former representative who was able to spin the general public’s frustration over the lack of jobs into the Tea Party movement which often favored putting candidates back in the power who helped destroy jobs. Also supporting this bill was Tom Delay (who left the House under ethic violations), Duke Cunningham (jailed for accepting bribes), and Dan Rostenkowski (ethic violation). One of the representative who helped pass the job killing measure was now Ohio governor John Kasich, whose collective bargaining bill appears destined to try to kill the other half of the economy under the guise of creating jobs.

It is clear that some of the jobs that were once in the US have already left Mexico as business continues to pursue cheaper labor. The problem is the politicians who have actively engaged in policies that so thoroughly run counter to their fellow citizens’ interests continue to maintain their own jobs and even if they are thrown out the companies often reach down and rescue them from falling in with the rabble. The Supreme Court has now even codified bribery in the Citizens United case. These politicians get to live in a much better life by supporting policies that harm those who they supposedly represent. The media instead treats these politicians like they are wise old scholars rather than lackeys who’ll work who’ll buy their loyalty.

USuncut plans for an action against FED EX at 5 P.M. At Park Street T station

If you happen to be in the Boston area Saturday.

In case you weren't aware already, FedEx is one of the most EGREGIOUS corporate tax dodgers in the US. When FedEx made $1.9 billion in profits, they managed to pay less than .005% of it in taxes, using 21 offshore tax havens!

A really important campaign is starting against FedEx this weekend. Workers in Brockton Ma, of all places, have planted the seed to unionize FedEx Ground.
The company would much prefer to keep its employees underpaid, overworked, and relying on Food stamps to feed their family and on MassHealth for medical coverage. They're making every effort to stop the union's formation. We'll be joined on Saturday by members of the "FedUp" campaign from Brockton!

The recent cuts proposed by Obama's deficit commission are DEVASTATING. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits are in serious trouble.

Corporate tax cheats are bankrupting America.
Hit the streets!

To join the US Uncut Boston mailing list, email USUNCUTBOS@gmail.com, subject line "JOIN"

Scott Brown gears up to defend his seat with tons of Wall Street money. I wonder who he works for?

Scott Brown great friend of Wall Street and business the way it has always been done is gearing up for up for a potential challenge from Elizabeth Warren who Wall Street absolutely hates because she took a stand against ripping people off. Wall Street has already given Brown a good chunk of money to fend off the challenge to keep the same business climate as what led to the collapse. Earlier this year Brown was caught on tape thanking the Koch brothers, better known for bringing the Midwest the disaster that is Wisconsin, for his election.

I think Scott Brown has done such a fine job that David Koch gave him a cookie and scruffed up his hair.

From the Huffington Post:

Scott Brown Taps Wall Street For Cash In Advance Of Possible Elizabeth Warren Challenge

First Posted: 7/21/11 05:35 PM ET Updated: 7/21/11 06:20 PM ET

112th Congress , Elizabeth Warren , Scott Brown , Scott Brown Wall Street , Elizabeth Warren 2012 , Elizabeth Warren Cfpb , Elizabeth Warren Senate , Scott Brown 2012 , Scott Brown Financial Industry , Scott Brown Fundraising , Politics News

 

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WASHINGTON -- As Democrats urge Elizabeth Warren, one of Wall Street's most public foes, to seek a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts next year, the financial industry is already throwing its support behind the seat's current occupant, Sen. Scott Brown (R), giving him nearly $315,000 in the most recent fundraising quarter.
The contributions from people and interests associated with the financial industry represented nearly 16 percent of the approximately $2 million Brown raised in the second quarter, according to his filings with the Federal Elections Commission. $48,000 of the financial contributions came from political action committees.
The donations, which came in between April and the end of June, were just below what Brown took in during the first quarter of 2012. Between January and the end of March, Brown raised $404,206 from the financial industry. During the first quarter, he received the third-highest amount of money from this sector of any senator or senatorial candidate.
This week, President Obama announced that he would not be nominating Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), freeing her up for a possible Senate run. Warren, a law professor at Harvard University, has lived in Massachusetts since the 1990s.
Brown's fundraising obviously came before Obama made his announcement, but Democrats have been floating her as their ideal candidate for months.
On Monday, Massachusetts Democrats said they would be "thrilled" if she were to be on the ticket in 2012. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee launched a petition to draft her and is already fundraising on her behalf.
Warren's work was the inspiration for the CFPB, and progressives view her as one of their strongest advocates for working families and financial regulations. At the same time, congressional Republicans and many Wall Street entities have fiercely opposed her, with GOP senators saying they would block her nomination to head the CFPB at all costs.

"Scott Brown is Wall Street's favorite -- and for good reason," said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Matt Canter. "He did their bidding behind closed doors during financial reform and he looks out for their interests every day, voting nearly 90 percent of the time with Mitch McConnell."
Democrats were the top recipients of financial industry donations. In 2012, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is leading in financial donations.
"It really smacks of desperation to watch Senate Democrats attack Scott Brown on a piece of legislation that they themselves also voted for, which President Obama signed into law and which Wall Street opposed," said Walsh. "It's also stunningly hypocritical when you consider that just days ago President Obama was in New York City raising campaign contributions from Wall Street executives and Senate Democrats themselves have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wall Street. But this is the type of misleading mudslinging voters in Massachusetts will have to get used to because Democrats in Washington know they can't beat Scott Brown fair and square."
Financial donations to Brown also spiked last summer, as Congress was considering financial regulatory reform. As the Boston Globe reported, between mid-June and early-July 2010, Brown took in $140,000 from banks and investment firms and their executives, which was 400 percent more than the average received by other Republican senators during that same time period.
Brown eventually voted for the legislation, but not before extracting key concessions to benefit the financial industry in his state. As Newsweek wrote at the time, Brown "managed to dramatically weaken the 'Volcker rule' barring banks from speculative proprietary trading, proposing a 2 percent exemption (which conference chair Sen. Chris Dodd then generously raised to 3 percent), and he got the Democrats to quash a planned $19 billion rainy-day tax on banks as well."
In a recent poll conducted for Brown and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Brown leads Warren by a 53-28 percent margin among likely 2012 voters.

"GE/Comcast's liberal station" MSNBC fires another liberal

NBC seems to make a habit of firing it's most liberal voices. In the past the station has also taken to fire it commentators that has its best ratings. It really makes you wonder whether this station really believes in anything and what is the point of even owning a television station. I feel sorry because I like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz but truthfully that's what happens when you have a multi-national corporation posing as one of the people. Hopefully Al Gore's station might have room for one more news caster.

Sweatshop the Game

Thank you to Mark I think that all my readers can see how special a game like this would be in preparing us for the new economy.To this point we've only been wearing the things but in the future we might all have to play different roles.

http://jayisgames.com/games/sweatshop/

Migraine headachegate

Hate to say I called it. Michelle Bachman who I agree with on almost nothing has headaches and this could be a problem with her running for president. This comes leaked to the media which then carries the water for their handlers. There not saying she's not qualified, they're just asking. After all she now has to release her medical records. It's called death of a thousand suggestions. Once again you can let the crazies get close but you don't get to touch anything important. I think a closer look will find the Wall Street Republicans hands all over this.

Nothing like an old fashioned privatized government.

From truth out:

ALEC contends that government agencies have an unfair monopoly on public goods and services. To change that situation, it has created a policy initiative to counter what it calls “Publicopoly.” ALEC’s stated aim is to provide “more effective, efficient government” via privatization—that is, the shifting of government functions to the private sector. ALEC lists its initiatives on its website (alec.org/publicopoly).

Though the specifics are secret and “restricted to members,” ALEC openly advocates privatizing public education, transportation and the regulation of public health, consumer safety and environmental quality including bringing in corporations to administer:

• Foster care, adoption services and child support payment processing.

• School support services such as cafeteria meals, custodial staff and transportation.

• Highway systems, with toll roads presented as a shining example.

• Surveiling and detaining convicted criminals.

• Ensuring the quality of wastewater treatment, drinking water, and solid waste services and facilities. (After all, when someone mentions a safe and secure public water supply, the voter’s next immediate thought is: “Only if it’s cost-effective!”)

To accomplish these initiatives, ALEC contends that “state governments can take an active role in determining which products and services should be privatized.” ALEC advocates three reforms: creating a “Private Enterprise Advisory Committee” to review if government agencies unfairly compete with the private sector; creating a special council that would contract with private vendors if they can “reduce the cost of government”; and creating legislation that would require government agencies to demonstrate “compelling public interest” in order to continue as public agencies. (Who then oversees these committees to ensure the private sector doesn’t unfairly profit by monopolizing public goods and services? One can only assume it is the same “Private Enterprise Advisory Committee.”)

ALEC nuts and bolts

ALEC is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that in recent years has reported about $6.5 million in annual revenue. ALEC’s members include corporations, trade associations, think tanks and nearly a third (about 2,000) of the nation’s state legislators (virtually all Republican). According to the group’s promotional material, ALEC’s mission is to “advance the Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty, through a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector, the federal government, and general public.”

ALEC currently claims more than 250 corporations and special interest groups as private sector members. While the organization refuses to make a complete list of these private members available to the public, some known members include Exxon Mobil, the Corrections Corporation of America, AT&T, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Verizon, Wal-Mart, Phillip Morris International and Koch Industries, along with a host of right-wing think tanks and foundations.

The full story is here:

http://www.truth-out.org/publicopoly-exposed/1310660473

Thank You, one and all.

Just received my 500th hit in a month and a half. It's good to see progress at something you started from the ground up. Please feel free to stop by as we're working to provide content.

Who they work for?

Sometimes I wonder why when I vote for somebody different I end up getting more of the same. The key to understanding this as best as I can tell is to look at who contributed to whom in the last election cycle. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan, and the US government contributed lots of money to both sides. I guess Goldman Sachs is not satisfied with contributing a bevy of executives right into the US treasury they also feel they need to buy both sides too. In the election cycle before, you could add Bank of America to that list. Who knows what Obama did to piss of BOA?

"They’ve got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen." -- Louisiana's Huey Long 1936.

The Democrats has plenty of large university money coming (Harvard, University of California, Columbia) as well as intuitions who have a lot to gain from the whole "supposed education accountability" movement (Microsoft, IBM, Kaplan testing (who is really just the Washington Post) This mean that you could expect little action that would restrict these companies or institutions from getting their hands on the "free" public school dollars. All educators need PDPs (Professional development Points) which is direct money right into the university coffers. Now some universities are even directly taking over school systems look at BU taking over Chelsea's school system (Massachusetts)

The Republican are in hock to just about every financial institution there is . Which leads one to wonder why the Democrats are even sweating the debt ceiling. The banking industry is unlikely to let the US default on the debt ceiling. They'll just bring in their Republican employees and give them a good talking to.

Also contributing to the the Republicans was Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearn. I guess the two bankrupt companies felt obligated to write checks to their political benefactors write to the bitter end. One has the feeling that the people writing those checks might not have been the ones in front of the computer screen who lost their jobs. They just disappeared and will reemerge under another guise. As Don Draper from Mad Men said

Don Draper: "The product is good. It's high quality. Dogs love it, but the name is poisoned."

Client: "That name got us where we are. Do you think that was just luck?"
Don Draper: "I'm not saying a new name is easy to find. And we will give you a lot of options. But it's a label on a can. And it will be true because it will promise the quality of the product that's inside." -- Mad Men, episode 3.11

One man or one woman is cheap: it adds up to just one vote. Money is everything. As long as some of the policies aren't too odorous, you can flood the airwaves with endless BS to dupe the voters and keep the same unchanging system in place.


From Open Secrets website:

Democrats Obama’s leading contributors

University of California	$1,591,395
Goldman Sachs	$994,795
Harvard University	$854,747
Microsoft Corp	$833,617
Google Inc	$803,436
Citigroup Inc	$701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$695,132
Time Warner	$590,084
Sidley Austin LLP	$588,598
Stanford University	$586,557
National Amusements Inc	$551,683
UBS AG	$543,219
Wilmerhale Llp	$542,618
Skadden, Arps et al	$530,839
IBM Corp	$528,822
Columbia University	$528,302
Morgan Stanley	$514,881
General Electric	$499,130
US Government	$494,820
Latham & Watkins	$493,835
Republican McCain’s leading contributors Merrill Lynch $373,595 Citigroup Inc $322,051 Morgan Stanley $273,452 Goldman Sachs $230,095 JPMorgan Chase & Co $228,107 US Government $208,379 AT&T Inc $201,438 Wachovia Corp $195,063 UBS AG $192,493 Credit Suisse Group $183,353 PricewaterhouseCoopers $167,900 US Army $167,820 Bank of America $166,026 Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher $159,596 Blank Rome LLP $154,226 Greenberg Traurig LLP $146,437 US Dept of Defense $144,105 FedEx Corp $131,974 Bear Stearns $117,498 Lehman Brothers $114,357 Democrat Kerry Presidential Contributors 2004 University of California $622,925 Harvard University $355,359 Time Warner $305,824 Goldman Sachs $303,250 Citigroup Inc $288,631 Microsoft Corp $278,597 Skadden, Arpset al $264,077 US Government $229,976 UBS Americas $219,700 JP Morgan Chase & Co $207,065 DLA Piper Rudnick et al $204,353 Wilmer, Cutler et al $203,386 Stanford University $195,899 IBM Corp $189,390 Viacom Inc $182,996 Morgan Stanley $180,979 Robins, Kaplan et al $177,650 Columbia University $175,592 Bank of America $169,502 General Electric $159,031 Republican Bush Presidential Contributors 2004 Morgan Stanley $600,480 Merrill Lynch $580,004 PricewaterhouseCoopers $513,750 UBS Americas $472,075 Goldman Sachs $390,600 MBNA Corp $356,350 Credit Suisse Group $331,040 Lehman Brothers $329,725 Citigroup Inc $320,620 Bear Stearns $309,150 Ernst & Young $305,140 Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu $290,450 US Government $287,636 Wachovia Corp $275,310 Ameriquest Capital $250,650 Blank Rome LLP $223,900 Bank of America $218,261 AT&T Inc $212,920 Cendant Corp $207,443 JP Morgan Chase & Co $205,900