Christian Groups Make Plans To Protect #OccupyLSX Protesters At St. Paul's Cathedral

 

By Susie Madrak

I've seen lots of online Christian bloggers express their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. I wonder if they're ever going to get involved like these British Christian groups? It would be a great thing:
Christian groups have drawn up plans to protect protesters by forming a ring of prayer around the camp outside St Paul's Cathedral, should an attempt be made to forcibly remove them.

As the storm of controversy over the handling of the Occupy London Stock Exchange demonstration deepened on Saturday, Christian activists said it was their duty to stand up for peaceful protest in the absence of support from St Paul's. One Christian protester, Tanya Paton, said: "We represent peace, unity and love. A ring of prayer is a wonderful symbol."

With senior officials at St Paul's apparently intent on seeking an injunction to break up the protest, the director of the influential religious thinktank Ekklesia, Jonathan Bartley, said the cathedral's handling of the protest had been a "car crash" and predicted more high-profile resignations from the Church of England.

Pelosi Shows She Cares More for The 1% than the 99%, and Supports Cuts To Social Security

The 1%er "Democrats" in congress are getting ready to help the republicans transfer your money to their brethren in the form of corporate tax cuts paid for by cuts to Social Security and Medicare

Nancy Pelosi has signaled to the uber rich "dinos"(democrat in name only) on the super committee that she will support a plan that cuts Social Security and Medicare.

Nancy Pelosi is a very wealthy San Franciscan and she has made a career in politics pretending to be on the side of the 99% of Americans that she is not part of. But as the end game approaches she will side with her wealthy friends and sell out the other 99%.

‘StudentsFirst’ Spending $70,000 To Support MI GOP Rep. Who Backed Huge Education Cuts

"Michelle Rhee, WE SEE YOU, SHAME SHAME, SHAME."  LGMC

By Zaid Jilani

Is StudentsFirst really living up to its name by supporting a right-wing Republican?

Earlier this week, Michigan’s Flint Journal reported that Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst has been supporting Michigan GOP Rep. Paul Scott against a potential recall election. Altogether, StudentsFirst has spent and owed $70,000 of political spending on behalf of Scott.

This came as a shock to many, who viewed Rhee’s StudentsFirst as primarily a nonpartisan group dedicated to education reform. By spending tens of thousands of dollars defending Scott, StudentsFirst is drawing a decidedly political line. What’s more, Scott has been a vocal defender of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) economic and education policies, which have lead to significant reductions in the state’s K-12 school aid.

Included among the budget that Snyder signed earlier this year was a whopping $300 million aid reduction to schools statewide. Additionally, there was a $100 million cut to aid to cities, which also serves to negatively impact schools.

It seems odd that an organization that says its goal is to “build a national movement to defend the interests of children in public education and pursue transformative reform, so that America has the best education system in the world” would spend so much money to defend a right-wing Republican who loyally helped his right-wing Republican governor take an axe to the statewide school budet.

PHOTOS: Oakland Residents Hold Candlelight Vigil For Iraq Vet Critically Injured By Police

By Zaid Jilani posted from ThinkProgress Special Topic on Oct 28, 2011 at 11:00 am

On October 25th, the Oakland Police Department instituted a harsh crackdown on Occupy Oakland, arresting dozens of people and using tear gas, flash grenades, and rubber bullets. The police also critically wounded Iraq war veteran Scott Olsen, who is now in the hospital for a fractured skull.

Last night, nearly 1300 Oakland residents held a candlelight vigil for Olsen at city hall. Here are some pictures from the vigil:


Yesterday, the intensive care unit where Olsen is being hospitalized upgraded his condition to “fair.” Oakland Mayor Jean Quan visited him as well.

Wanna See a Real Ass Kicking (Itself)? Read the Dems' 'Super Committee' Proposal

R J Eskow

October 28, 2011 11:00 AM

If you ever questioned whether the so-called "Super Committee" represents a breakdown in the democratic process, yesterday's proposal from the group's Democratic members should put your doubts to rest. The system's seriously broken when unelected super-legislators from both parties keep trying to top each other in proposing inhumane and unpopular programs.

The party of the donkey is about to give itself a real ass-kicking.
Representatives from the "party of the people" want to cut Medicare and Social Security, and they're looking for bragging rights on who'd cut government more in a time of need.

If the regular folks' party is trying to impose this much pain on the elderly, poor, and disabled, what's the rich people's party going to do: sacrifice babies in Times Square on live television?

Read More: Here

Obama's Re-Fi Plan: The Perfection of Debt-Serfdom

charles hugh smith

How better to corral restive underwater debt-serfs than to herd them into accepting a new, "better" set of lifelong servitude shackles?


President Obama is taking credit for a new government plan to "save homeowners." That is of course pure propaganda to mask the plan's true goal: the perfection of debt-serfdom. The basic thrust of the plan is straightforward: encourage "underwater" homeowners whose mortgages exceed the value of their homes to re-finance at lower rates.

The stated incentive (i.e. the PR pitch) is to lower homeowners' monthly payments via lower interest rates.


This is the Federal Reserve's entire game plan in a nutshell: don't write off any debt, as that would reveal the banking sector's insolvency, but play extend-and-pretend with crushing debtloads by lowering the cost of servicing the debt.


The key purpose of this "plan" is to leave the principle owed to banks on their books at full value while ensnaring the hapless debt-serf (the "homeowner") into permanent servitude to the banks.

If the net worth of your home is a negative number, then what exactly do you own? You have the right to occupy the shelter, and you own the debt. So how is this any different from a lease? There is no equity, and no equity being built: there is a monthly payment in return for the right to occupy the dwelling.


The difference is the leaseholder can move at the end of the lease with no debt obligations. The underwater "homeowner" debt-serf is trapped by his/her mortgage into what amounts to lifetime servitude to the holders of the mortgage.


All the plan does is perfect this debt-serfdom. In a truly capitalist, transparent, free-market economy in which assets were always marked to market, then mortgages that are grossly misaligned with the market value of the house would be written down and the mortgage holders forced to book the loss.

Over-leveraged lenders, i.e. the "too big to fail" banks which dominate the U.S. mortgage market, would see their capital reduced to zero by the writedowns. They would be declared insolvent and liquidated. Their shareholders and bondholders would book losses.


But these losses are unacceptable in our crony-capitalist/cartel-capitalist Status Quo, so the "solution" to systemic insolvency is to manipulate the debt-serfs to keep paying, and thus keep the unicorn-and-pixies valuations of real estate on the banks' books at full value.


This is the same game that Japan's lenders and Central State have played for two decades, and it remains the heart of their failed policies and decaying economy. In Japan, lenders papered over their bad debts with all sorts of back-door machinations: they extended new loans to debtors so the debtors could continue to make interest payments, they created zombie accounts filled with delinquent loans that were still kept on the books at full value, they wrote new loans at near-zero rates so interest payments were lowered, and so on--the same ploys and games being played by the Federal Reserve, the Federal government's housing lenders (Fannie and Freddie) and the banks.

The propaganda machine is running at full throttle, of course, with the usual parade of toadies and lackeys trotted out to say what a great and wonderful thing this plan is for poor homeowners. But industry analyst Ken Rosen inadvertently revealed the real motivation for the plan: to keep underwater homeowners from "walking away" in so-called "strategic defaults." underwater homeowners thrown lifeline by Obama (Mercury News).

Why is strategic default anathema to the Status Quo? Because the abandoned house will eventually have to be sold on the market, and at that point its true value revealed. The mortgage holder will then be forced to book a stupendous loss, and the inflated-paper "asset" on the books vanishes.


The Big Lie here is implicit: "your house will someday come back in value, so hang in there, debt-serf." No, it won't. The bubble has popped, and the mania has left town. Housing will retrace to pre-bubble valuations circa 1996-98.


As usual, the Plan is all about managing perceptions and political theater: we're here to help the little guy, the struggling homeowner; we are in charge, we have a plan, we're competent, this will fix the housing market.


Too bad they're all lies. Perception management is not the same as actually solving the underlying problem, yet perception management is the Status Quo's response to every problem.

The perfection of debt-serfdom is now complete. First, make student loans "necessary" for the "good life" and then make that debt permanent and unbreakable. In other words, institutionalize debt-serfdom and lifelong servitude to the financial sector.

The re-fi "plan" herds potentially rebellious mortgage debt-serfs into new corrals, with the incentive of slightly lower interest rates. The lifetime of servitude to financial Overlords remains firmly in place. That's the "plan."

REPORT: House GOP’s ‘Job Creating’ Spending Cuts Destroyed 370,000 Jobs

By Travis Waldron on Oct 27, 2011

House Republicans took the government to the brink of shutdown last spring by demanding across-the-board budget cuts to many vital programs. Instead of focusing on job creation, as Americans wanted them to, the GOP turned its attention to slashing funds for programs that funded assistance for women and children, local law enforcement, the social safety net, environmental protections, and many other programs they deemed as either too expensive or unnecessary. Worse, when challenged on why they hadn’t made the effort to tackle high unemployment, Republicans insisted that their slash-and-burn budget cuts were meant to create jobs.

Not all of those cuts made it through, but the GOP succeeded in passing massive spending reductions as part of a continuing resolution that kept the government operating. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress’ Scott Lilly, those cuts didn’t result in the job creating boon Republicans insisted would follow. Instead, it has done just the opposite, as those cuts will result in the destruction of roughly 370,000 jobs.

Lilly’s report focuses on three major areas where Republicans insisted on spending cuts: funding for local law enforcement, environmental cleanup of sites where nuclear weapons were disabled and destroyed, and investments into construction, repair, and maintenance of government buildings. Cuts to just those three areas will result in the loss of 90,000 jobs, the report found — 60,000 from direct cuts, and 30,000 additional jobs lost from the secondary impacts of job losses in each community.
And according to Lilly, those three areas weren’t among the worst budget cuts forced through by the Republican House:

“Similar stories could be told about many other budget cuts made in this bill—cuts that resulted in further job losses,” said Scott Lilly, author of the report and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. “All of the various 250 program reductions in the fiscal year 2011 Continuing Resolution probably eliminated more than 370,000 American jobs. The three areas selected for discussion in this paper are in my judgment neither the worst cuts made by the committee from a policy standpoint nor the best. But without a doubt they demonstrate the consequences of slashing government spending in a weak economy.”

According to the report, the $2.5 billion cut to local law enforcement funding could have prevented 36,000 police layoffs nationwide, and similar cuts made to grant programs could have prevented the loss of other state and local government jobs. Crunched by the recession and budget cuts, state and local governments shed more than 200,000 jobs in 2010 alone. Republicans not only cut such funding this spring but have now opposed the American Jobs Act — which included grants to state and local governments for the hiring of teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

ANALYSIS: Warren Buffett Would Pay As Little As 0.2 Percent Tax Rate Under Rick Perry’s Tax Plan

By Seth Hanlon, director of fiscal reform for the Doing What Works project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

 Billionaire investor Warren Buffett would pay barely any taxes under Perry's 'flat tax.'

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry released a tax plan this week that he and many media reports called a “20 percent flat tax.” But Perry’s new alternative tax scheme is hardly “flat.”

Leaving aside the fact that it is layered on top of the existing tax code, it establishes not one but two different tax rates: 20 percent for wages, and zero percent for investment income. Because capital gains and dividends would be sheltered from taxes under Perry’s plan, some of the wealthiest Americans would wind up paying nowhere near 20 percent overall.

In fact, billionaire Warren Buffett, who has lamented the fact that he currently pays only 11 percent of his adjusted gross income in federal income taxes, would pay as little as 0.2 percent under Perry’s plan.

Perry’s campaign has helpfully released a sample of the tax form that wealthy people would use under his plan. We’ve taken the liberty of filling out this form for four high-income Americans whose tax information is public: Buffett, Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, and Perry himself. By computing their tax bill using Perry’s sample tax form and the income reported on their most recent actual tax returns, we can calculate just how big a tax cut Perry is proposing to give them.

Read More: Here

CHART: Typical Hourly Wage Went Up Just $1.23 In The Last 36 Years

 Laura Pereyra, special assistant for communications at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Flickr photo by Saad Akhtar

In a speech yesterday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) claimed that President Obama created “class resentment” by calling for slightly higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans. At the same time, Occupy Wall Street protesters continue to speak out in favor of an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top of the income scale.

Could their frustration be a product of the increasing inequality rather than Obama’s “divisive rhetoric?” Absolutely. In fact, a New York Times/CBS News poll released yesterday found that two-thirds of Americans believe “that wealth should be distributed more evenly in the country.”

As noted by the Half in Ten Campaign’s new report, “Restoring Shared Prosperity: Strategies to Cut Poverty and Expand Economic Growth,” the hourly wage of a typical worker grew from $14.73 in 1973 to $15.96 in 2009, for a raise in real terms (after accounting for inflation) of $1.23 over 36 years. Yes, you read that right. Only $1.23, an 8.4 percent increase over the last 36 years.

Top earners, meanwhile, saw a gain of $12.70 per hour gain (30 percent) over the same time frame. The growing gaps between the wealthy and everyone else could not be more stark.


Even 68 percent of millionaires, according to a survey from the Spectrem Group, agree that the rich should get taxed more. It’s not in the interest of America to have people fall out of the middle class and into an increasing population living in poverty, as the economy continues to suffer through a slow recovery. The middle class is the engine of America’s economic growth.

A report released this week by the Congressional Budget Office found that between 1979 and 2007, income grew 275 percent for the richest one percent of Americans, but by just 18 percent for those at the bottom. The federal government can do something about this — from investing in our infrastructure to improving education. It can help bolster demand and the Half in Ten Campaign offers some good ideas to get us started.

Martin Sullivan rebuts those who claim that the 2009 Recovery Act (i.e. the stimulus) did nothing to boost the economy.

CHART: ‘Life Without Stimulus’ — The U.S. vs. The U.K. | At Tax.com, Martin Sullivan rebuts those who claim that the 2009 Recovery Act (i.e. the stimulus) did nothing to boost the economy. “Republicans constantly remind us that the Obama stimulus — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — did not work. They voted against it.

In the United Kingdom the government is led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron. His government did not adopt stimulus,” Sullivan noted. “After three and a half years, U.S. GDP is just about returning to the pre-recession peak. That’s awful. But it’s far better than the U.K. where GDP is still five percent ($750 billion in US terms) below its pre-recession peak.”
(HT: Catherine Rampell)

Perry On Whether His Tax Plan Gives Millions In Tax Breaks To The Rich: ‘I Don’t Care About That’

By Pat Garofalo

Watch it:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) today became the latest GOP presidential hopeful to release a tax plan, as he tries to catch up in the polls, some of which even have him trailing former Speaker Newt Gingrich and libertarian favorite Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). The plan, as Perry has been explaining, revolves around a 20 percent flat tax.

Perry’s flat tax was designed with the help of billionaire media mogul Steve Forbes, who ran twice for president, unsuccessfully, on a flat tax plan. As we noted yesterday, Forbes’ plan would have provided a $1.9 billion tax cut for…Steve Forbes.

Perry’s plan is slightly different that Forbes’ flat tax of a decade ago, as it has a higher rate and preserves some popular deductions. But, like with all flat tax plans, Perry’s plan would give the rich a huge tax cut, since it drops their rate from 35 percent to 20 percent and exempts their investment income from taxation at all. When CNBC’s John Harwood asked Perry today why — in an era of massive income inequality — the rich should be given a tax break worth “hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of dollars,” Perry replied, “but I don’t care about that”.

Former pizza magnate Herman Cain and former Govs. Mitt Romney (R-MA) and Jon Huntsman (R-UT) have all laid out tax plans that give huge tax breaks to the wealthy, while claiming that they want to help the middle-class. It seems that Perry is now finally hopping on that train.

The Argentine Model

Posted on Oct 23, 2011

AP / Victor R. Caivano

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner holds a photo of her late husband, former Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires on Sunday. Fernandez was re-elected in a landslide, winning with the widest margin in the country’s history as voters were mobilized by popular programs that spread the wealth of a booming economy.

While politicians from Athens to Washington are pushing through devastating austerity programs, Argentinians voted in droves Sunday to re-elect their populist, welfare queen of a president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.

Fernandez is the widow of Nestor Kirchner, who died a year ago after winning the award for world’s best husband (Nestor decided not to run for re-election so that his wife could take a turn).

But before he left office, Nestor Kirchner infuriated global elites by defaulting on Argentina’s $95 billion foreign debt.

Greece, facing an external debt load five to six times that amount, has decided instead to severely cut back on public spending while it works with other governments to address its debt crisis.

Argentina, on the other hand, pumped money into subsidies and social programs. And while the rest of the world has been circling the drain, financially speaking, Argentina’s economy has been booming, with GDP growing last year by more than 9 percent.

There are a lot of learned fellows who don’t approve of the economic policies of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, but the undisputed result in the short term is a thriving economy and a landslide re-election.  −PZS

A Businessman Occupies Wall Street

Posted on Oct 22, 2011

NEW YORK—I met David Intrator during the fourth week of the Wall Street protests, the night before Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Brookfield Properties and the New York Police Department were due to clear the park and shut down the demonstration.

Dressed in a suit and tie and holding a sign that read “Harvard Men for Economic Justice,” he didn’t look like a typical protester, and when he opened his mouth to talk, he didn’t sound like one either. A few days later, we sat down for a conversation in his Midtown office on the east side of Manhattan. Here is some of what he said. —Alexander Reed Kelly

 

Occupy Wall Street: Domestic terrorism in Maine ... media is silent

Mon Oct 24, 2011 at 09:30 AM PDT

by Barbara Morrill

Domestic terrorism in Portland, Maine:

Portland police are looking for the person who threw a chemical bomb at the Occupy Maine encampment in Portland during the early morning hours on Sunday. [...] Though no one was injured, [Sgt. Glen] McGary said the homemade bomb, which consisted of chemicals poured into a plastic Gatorade container could have caused serious injury.

Occupy Maine, which is protesting corporate greed, has erected about three dozen tents in the 2.5-acre park. McGary said the bomb was thrown into the camp’s kitchen, a tarped area where food is cooked and served.
Occupy Maine, which began in Monument Square, is aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

What's amazing here is that a financial freedom fighter tossed a bomb in the middle of a peaceful protest and the media is silent. Why are they ignoring this act of domestic terrorism? After all, it wasn't an abortion clinic. And God knows, if this had happened at a tea party rally, Fox News would have already assigned it a theme song.

The Other Occupation: How Wall Street Occupies Washington

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 12, 2011

As ThinkProgress has previously noted, the 99 Percent Movement has been set off thanks to long-standing economic inequities and and a recession caused primarily by Wall Street’s misdeeds.
But Wall Street did not engage in reckless financial behavior — which plunged 64 million people worldwide into extreme poverty — in a vacuum.

In order to engage in these practices that brought the world’s economy to its knees, Wall Street had to make sure that the federal government based in Washington, DC would both de-regulate the financial industry (and provide lax oversight) and that Congress and the Federal Reserve would bail out banks with few strings attached if they were in danger of failing. The way the financial industry and big banks won this kid glove treatment from the federal government is by occupying Washington — flooding it with campaign contributions, lobbyists, and its own staffers and executives to occupy key positions of power. ThinkProgress has assembled a rundown of three ways Wall Street has occupied Washington:

1. Wall Street Occupies Washington With Massive Campaign Contributions: On Nov. 12, 1999 President Bill Clinton signed into law the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a Depression-era law that created a firewall between commercial and investment banking. Repealing this law was one of the top legislative goals of the financial industry. In the 1998 election cycle, commercial banks spent $18 million on congressional campaign contributions, with 65 percent going to Republicans and 35 percent going to Democrats. Securities and investment firms donated over $40 million. The mega-bank Citibank spent $1,954,191 during that cycle, and it was soon able to merge with Travelers Group as a result of the repeal of banking regulations. Between 2008 and 2010, when new financial regulations were being written following the financial crisis, the finance, insurance, and real estate industries spent $317 million in federal campaign contributions, with $73 million of that coming from Political Action Committees (PACs). The hold of campaign contributions is starkly bipartisan. As Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) explained to Real Clear Politics in an interview last year, he couldn’t get a vote on a windfall profits tax on bonuses at bailed out banks due to campaign contributors. “I couldn’t even get a vote,” Webb explained. “And it wasn’t because of the Republicans. I mean they obviously weren’t going to vote for it. But I got so much froth from Democrats saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fundraising.”

2. Wall Street Occupies Washington With Its Lobbyists: One way to control what Washington lawmakers do is to give them access to exclusive funding streams that allow them to finance their campaigns. But yet another is to control the stream of information. From the deregulatory period of 1998 to 2009, the financial sector spent $3.3 billion on lobbyists. In 2007, the financial industry employed 2,996 separate lobbyists, five for every member of Congress. During the debate over financial reform last year, the industry flooded the nation’s capital with its own lobbyists. On just one issue — regulating derivatives — financial industry lobbyists outnumbered consumer group lobbyists and other pro-reform advocates by 11 to 1. In fact, by 2010, the industry had hired a whopping 1,600 former federal employees as lobbyists. Included among these lobbyists were high-ranking former public leaders like former Democratic House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (MO) and Kenneth Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff. Much of this lobbying is done through elite K Street firms that specialize in hiring government insiders. Yet there are also bank-funded front groups like the Chamber of Commerce that deploy lobbyists on behalf of the big banks.

3. Wall Street Literally Occupies Washington By Placing Its Staff In Government Positions: Shortly after Clinton signed into law the repeal of the firewall between commercial and investment banking, his Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs alumni Robert Rubin left the government to work for newly-formed Citigroup — whose merger was only possible thanks to the policies Rubin championed and enacted. His compensation at Citigroup topped $15 million, not including stock options. Goldman’s alumni are found across the government, including bailout architect and former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Paulson’s bailout chief Neil Kashkari, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission chairman Gary Gensler. The revolving door, of course, works both ways. Obama budget director Peter Orszag joined Citigroup shortly after leaving the government. This is just a small sampling of Wall Street’s staffers who found their way into government.

These three facets of lobbying do not include how these financial interests fan their funding out among nonprofits and think tanks, and how they fund media campaigns and public relations efforts within the parameters of the geographic territory of the District of Columbia. The amount of money spent on these tasks is likely formidable but is difficult to track.

There are reforms that can be enacted to combat this Wall Street infiltration of Washington. Ranging from public financing of federal campaigns to new disclosure laws to placing restrictions on lobbying from federal public officials, these reforms would blunt the impact of big money on federal policymaking. Yet only vigilance from the American public can get such reforms enacted.

First They Ignore You, Then They Ridicule You, Then They Fight You, Then You Win. Gandhi

CHART: Thanks To The 99 Percent Movement, Media Finally Covering Jobs Crisis And Marginalizing Deficit Hysteria

By Zaid Jilani on Oct 18, 2011 at 2:30 pm

Raucous protests across the country are refocusing media attention.

Part of the reason economic policymakers have failed to properly address the poor economy is because the nation’s news media has not properly covered the unemployment crisis. For example, at the beginning of August, when Washington, DC was debating the debt ceiling crisis, the national debt dominated the airwaves. While it was appropriate for the media then to be covering the deficit due to the debt ceiling debate at the time, there was a stunning lack of coverage of the jobs crisis. A ThinkProgress review of the media coverage of the last week of July found that the word “debt” was mentioned more than 7,000 times on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News, and “unemployed” was only mentioned 75 times:


Yet now, things have changed. With the debt ceiling debates behind the country and thanks partly to the pressure being brought upon politicians and the media by the 99 Percent Movement and the occupations taking place all over the country, it looks as if the press is finally focusing on the jobs crisis and the behavior of Wall Street instead. A ThinkProgress review of the same three networks between Oct. 10 and Oct. 16 finds that the word “debt” only netted 398 mentions, while “occupy” grabbed 1,278, Wall Street netted 2,378, and jobs got 2,738:


When Occupy Wall Street started last month, a wide variety of news outlets complained that the protesters would not accomplish anything or that they did not have clear goals. It now appears that the resulting 99 Percent Movement has scored at least one victory: successfully re-framing media coverage onto the jobs crisis and real economy rather than trumped-up fears about the national debt or deficit.

Vatican Calls For Economic Equality, Sweeping Reform Of Global Financial System

By Travis Waldron posted from ThinkProgress 

With protesters taking to the streets around the world to fight for better income equality and economic opportunities for the poor and middle classes, the Vatican called Monday for an overhaul of world’s financial systems and a return to a global economy based on ethical behavior and “achievement of a universal common good,” the AP reports. While the Vatican has, in the past, criticized uncontrolled capitalism, the new call goes further, decrying “an economic liberalism that spurns all rules and controls.”

The call for greater control and equality in financial markets comes at a time when Republican presidential candidates — many of whom tout their religious credentials on the campaign trail — have called for the repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law aimed at preventing a crisis similar to that of 2008, and as Republicans in both Congress and on the campaign trail continue to back budget cuts that would eviscerate programs that help the poor. At the same time, protesters spurred by the original Occupy Wall Street demonstrations have brought increasing attention rising income inequality, corporate greed, and tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

The Vatican release is a clear sign that it supports the message of the Occupy Wall Street protests, Vincent J. Miller, the Gudorf Chair in Catholic Theology and Culture at the University of Dayton, said in a press release:

“While conservative leaders and several presidential candidates want to eviscerate financial reform, the Vatican has sent a powerful message that prudent regulation of our financial system is a moral priority. I expect Catholic neo-cons who usually present themselves as the defenders of orthodoxy will ignore or scramble to defuse this timely teaching. It’s clear the Vatican stands with the Occupy Wall Street protesters and others struggling to return ethics and good governance to a financial sector grown out of control after 30 years of deregulation.”

 Read More: Here

A Must Read. There IS A Way Out

Cenk Uygur

 Host of The Young Turks

 

How to Regain Our Democracy

Declaration of Independence

Our politicians are bought. Everyone knows it. Conservatives know it just as much as liberals do. And libertarians have probably known it all along. The Democrats are bought and the Republicans even more so. They don't represent us. They represent their donors. We have taxation without representation. Our democracy is in serious trouble.

We must regain our ability to make a difference, to have our votes count. Right now, corporate interests and special interests dominate our politics because they can spend unlimited money. Unfortunately, in this current system money speaks louder than words. The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the checkbook is far mightier than the pen. In the congressional races in 2008, the candidate who had more money won more than 93% of the time. Our representatives don't serve us; they serve the people who pay them -- their corporate funders.

So, how can we change that? Well, we can build an army of American citizens willing to fight back against the corporate machines. We can also fight money with money. But we have to concentrate all of our resources into one single attack -- making sure we take corporate money out of politics. Now, you can never stop rich people from spending their own money on their political ideology. But that has happened throughout our history and we have survived that. What has changed in the last 30 years is the power of corporate money, which is nearly unlimited.

Starting in 1978, the Supreme Court opened the spigot to corporate spending in politics. Since then, the average American has seen their wages stagnate and their share of taxes rise significantly, while corporations have seen their tax burden shrink and the top 1% has literally tripled their income. There has been a massive redistribution of wealth in this country. And it's going straight to the top.

There is one answer though. It is the one thing that is above Congress and the Supreme Court -- a constitutional amendment. We must pass an amendment saying that corporations are not people and they do not have the right to spend money to buy our politicians. Corporations have no soul. They are profit-making robots. They are not endowed by their creator with inalienable rights. They are legally created fictions that are charged with maximizing profit without any concern for morality. They can and they must be stopped before they destroy our democracy.

We are not against the existence of corporations, we are only against their ability to buy and control our government. Robots can be useful, but that doesn't mean we should let them run our democracy. We must not allow multinational corporations to infringe upon American sovereignty. This is supposed to be a democracy run by citizens, not by international, unaccountable business and financial interests.
The objective of Wolf Pac will be to raise money and raise an army for the sole purpose of passing this amendment. We need a constitutional revolution. Please join us and help retake our democracy.

28th Amendment

Corporations are not people. They have none of the constitutional rights of human beings. Corporations are not allowed to give money to any politician, directly or indirectly. No politician can raise over $100 from any person or entity. All elections must be publicly financed.

Join the Fight

Now, in order to make this amendment a reality, we must take a series of concrete steps. The objective of Wolf Pac is not theory, it is results. We will pass the amendment and we will regain our democracy. Here is how we're going to do it.

We must gather up an a fighting force. We need programmers and organizers and lawyers and leaders. We need this movement to be in all 50 states. So, first we are doing a call for generals in this army. Please write into us and tell us what your expertise is and how you can help. If you can volunteer, great; if you can contribute, great. But we need you no matter what. There is no secret money behind this. There is no profit in it other than for our democracy. That's why this movement must be people powered.

Unfortunately it appears that our Congress is completely infected with the virus. So proposing an amendment through Congress seems hopeless. But luckily there is another way. We can do this purely at the state level. The states can call for a constitutional convention and they can ratify an amendment that comes out of one. And there is nothing our corrupt federal government can do about it.

We are hoping that the first wave of volunteers help us organize at the state level. Let's go occupy the states! Can you imagine all 50 state houses occupied until the people get what they want -- their democracy back! It can happen. You can make it happen. Joint the fight. Now, it's our time. Get up, it's time to get them back.

Join Wolf Pac Here.

B of A and Fed Are Conspiring to Transfer Billions of Dollars of Losses To Public Debt.

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AmpedStatus Report )))

#OccupyWallStreet May Address Looting by Bank of America and Federal Reserve

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By Washington’s Blog
Many people are furious that the Federal Reserve and Bank of America have initiated a coup to dump billions of dollars of losses on the American people.
Many are suggesting that the “Occupy” protesters rally to stop this robbery.

One of the top stories currently on Reddit (one of the top social media sites), is:

OWS and 99%: Please pay attention to this and stop it from happening (BofA and Fed socializing losses)

I understand that the Occupy protesters are, in fact, currently debating making a statement on this theft.
Currently, there are two competing draft statements. This one is from someone very savvy on understanding how the average American thinks:

A portion of the 53 trillion dollars of derivatives (yes that’s with a t, about the size of the entire global economy) transferred to Bank of America’s parent company from Merill Lynch has recently been transferred to Bank of America.

Derivatives contracts in a bank are paid before anyone else gets paid.
Therefore, these derivatives contracts would be paid before depositors receive their money. These people just cut in front of you.

Its very simple, the reason that banks and trading houses were originally separated was to prevent this sort of thing. What’s really going to happen is that the government is going to end up bailing out the FDIC … so this will end up being a government bailout.

You’ll end up getting shafted, either by derivatives holders cutting in front of you or by your having to bail out the FDIC so it can bail out banks depositors. Either way, this is yet another instance of looting by the big banks and big government.
Just say no … don’t let this stand.

And this one is from two people who are experts on the technical issues involved:

We denounce Bank of America’s transfer of high risk derivatives to its federally insured accounts. This is yet another example of systemically dangerous institutions, big banks like BofA and JPM, once again attempting to shift potentially substantial losses onto the backs of hardworking Americans. The fact that the Federal Reserve supports this action demonstrates Ben Bernanke’s complicity and/or gross incompetence in supporting the Wall Street elite at the expense of tax paying citizens.

-- #OWS Interview: Prosecute the Wall Street Mafia! Bill Black, Dylan Ratigan & David DeGraw on the Destruction of the Rule of Law

When it comes to prosecuting the lead players involved in the fraudulent financial activities that have led to the destruction of our economy, the Obama Administration, loaded with Wall Street campaign contributions and led by major financial firm operatives such as Tim Geithner and Bill Daley, has delivered empty rhetoric and minimal action. In the absence of leadership on this critical issue, it may come down to a new proposed OccupyWallStreet Department of Justice Working Group to restore the rule of law. The proposed group will feature members such as Bill Black, a man who has a strong track record of successfully prosecuting and jailing bankers during the S&L crisis.

In this video, David DeGraw joins Bill Black on the Dylan Ratigan Show to discuss the "epidemic of fraud" and the people who need to be held personally responsible for the destruction of our economic system.

Saturday Night Live Opens with Mayor Bloomberg Speech on #OccupyWallStreet Protests

OWS hits prime-time thanks to SNL!  

A Letter from Goldman Sachs

Concerning Occupy Wall Street

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)– The following is a letter released today by Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman of banking giant Goldman Sachs:

Dear Investor:

Up until now, Goldman Sachs has been silent on the subject of the protest movement known as Occupy Wall Street.  That does not mean, however, that it has not been very much on our minds.  As thousands have gathered in Lower Manhattan, passionately expressing their deep discontent with the status quo, we have taken note of these protests.  And we have asked ourselves this question:

How can we make money off them?

The answer is the newly launched Goldman Sachs Global Rage Fund, whose investment objective is to monetize the Occupy Wall Street protests as they spread around the world.  At Goldman, we recognize that the capitalist system as we know it is circling the drain – but there’s plenty of money to be made on the way down.

The Rage Fund will seek out opportunities to invest in products that are poised to benefit from the spreading protests, from police batons and barricades to stun guns and forehead bandages.  Furthermore, as clashes between police and protesters turn ever more violent, we are making significant bets on companies that manufacture replacements for broken windows and overturned cars, as well as the raw materials necessary for the construction and incineration of effigies.

It would be tempting, at a time like this, to say “Let them eat cake.”  But at Goldman, we are actively seeking to corner the market in cake futures.  We project that through our aggressive market manipulation, the price of a piece of cake will quadruple by the end of 2011.

Please contact your Goldman representative for a full prospectus.  As the world descends into a Darwinian free-for-all, the Goldman Sachs Rage Fund is a great way to tell the protesters, “Occupy this.”  We haven’t felt so good about something we’ve sold since our souls.

Sincerely,
Lloyd Blankfein
Chairman, Goldman Sachs

Ten To Twenty Thousand 99%s Protest In San Francisco, And No Local News Coverage

I was there, I saw it. The tourists saw it. The millions on the internet saw it. But apparently the local news didn't. I wonder how much it cost B of A to make to make it disappear on local news?

Remember, Remember the 5th of November: BANK TRANSFER DAY

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Together we can ensure that corrupt crony-capitalist banking institutions will ALWAYS remember the 5th of November! If the 99% removes our funds from the Too Big To Fail major banking institutions to non-profit credit unions or community banks on or by this date, we will send a clear message to the 1% that conscious consumers won't support companies with unethical business practices.   To help you find an honest community bank or credit union we recommend going to the Move Your Money Project.    http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/

Saturday OCT 15th CALL TO ACTION

October 15th Call to Action

Posted Oct. 14, 2011, 1:07 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

 

Over the last 30 years, the 1% have created a global economic system - neoliberalism - that attacks our human rights and destroys our environment. Neoliberalism is worldwide - it is the reason you no longer have a job, it is the reason you cannot afford healthcare, education, food, your mortgage.
Neoliberalism is your future stolen.

Neoliberalism is everywhere, gutting labor standards, living wages, social contracts, and environmental protections. It is "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." It is a system that ravages the global south and creates global financial crisis - crisis in Spain, in Greece, in the United States. It is a system built on greed and thrives on destablizing shocks.

It allows the 1% to enrich themselves by impoverishing humanity.

This has to stop!

We must usher in an era of democratic and economic justice.

We must change, we must evolve.

On October 15th the world will rise up as one and say, "We have had enough! We are a new beginning, a global fight on on all fronts that will usher in an era of shared prosperity, respect, mutual aid, and dignity."

Please SUPPORT your local OCCUPY Organizations

Please support your local OCCUPY organizations!  Share our site -  we will cover the OCCUPY events as they unravel.

Join a March, this Saturday, October 15, with your family and loved ones- it is a Day International of Solidarity.  See our next post for more info on what this is.  Also, if you cannot join in (because we know some of us have job and family situations that will not allow it) then please SUPPORT your local OCCUPY orgs with supplies, donations, play some music or bake some home cooked meals or treats to keep them upbeat but do SOMETHING to support this revolutionary time in American history.  It is not over - it is just beginning and there is a very long  road ahead.  People - even the 1% are starting to listen but they are afraid. Your Support will show that you will want a Just and Fair Economy for everyone, even the 1%.

REMOVE your money from the large Too Big to Fail criminal banks - you know who we are taking about - move your accounts to a community bank or credit union and tell them WHY you are closing your account.  Make the big banks and wall street suffer, for a change. 

 This movement is not pro-anyone or pro-party in particular .  Both political parties have failed us so far.  This is a movement of the MAJORITY - the TRUE MAJORITY - the 99% of us struggling to make a middle class life for our families - struggling to have the life we lived as children.   Is that too much to ask? 

Check for the time your local OCCUPY org is meeting this weekend.  All around the globe and through out America, what is left of the Middle Class (Americans like you) will be marching against those who brought us a this Global Depression - and yes, that is what it is. Global Depression.  Look around...what do you see? Is anyone really happy and prospering?


If you answered yes to this, or if you are one of the lucky families who still has an affordable mortgage (but your home's value declines every day), health care plan, provide a quality education for your children, are gainfully employed and prospering - we are truly happy that you have not had to feel the sting of what this Depression has caused. However most reading this are NOT untouched, or in the 1%, which means that eventually, you too will feel this sting and it is harsh.  It is a horrific feeling to be forced out of a home, not have the money to feed you children, watch friends or family fade away when health care is not affordable, pound the street for gainful employment for months and years, watch your life savings fade into nothing due to housing, health, education and economic issues.  It is truly depressing and it does not need to be this way in America.  This crisis was cause by Wall Street and the Too Big to Fail Banks and will affect everyone reading this - eventually.

Foreclosures, joblessness, homelessness, unaffordable housing, lack of health care, lack of quality education, unfair tax structures, 99% of us struggling while the 1% extract all the wealth - need we say more?

The time is NOW to take a STAND.

The end of the American Dream?

The end of the American Dream? Fall in housing market is worst since Great Depression

By Daily Mail Reporter

The American dream of home ownership has felt its biggest decade-by-decade drop since the Great Depression, according to new 2010 census figures released Thursday.

The analysis by the Census Bureau found the home ownership rate fell to 65.1 percent last year.
While that level remains the second highest decennial rate, analysts say the U.S. may never return to its mid-decade housing boom peak in which nearly 70 percent of occupied households were owned by their residents.

The end of a dream? Home ownership has felt its biggest drop since the Great Depression

The reason: a longer-term economic reality of tighter credit, prolonged job losses and reduced government involvement.

Unemployed young adults are least likely to own, delaying first-time home purchases to live with Mom and Dad. Middle-aged adults 35-64, mostly home owners who were hit with mortgage foreclosures or bankruptcy after the housing bust in 2006, are at their lowest levels of ownership in decades.

Measured by race, the home ownership gap between whites and blacks is now at its widest since 1960, wiping out more than 40 years of gains.

'The changes now taking place are mind-boggling: the housing market has completely crashed and attitudes toward housing are shifting from owning to renting,' said Patrick Newport, economist with IHS Global Insight. "While 10 years ago owning a home was the American Dream, I'm not sure a lot of people still think that way.'

He noted the now-diminished roles of mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which for decades at the urging of government helped enable loans to borrowers with poor credit, many of them minorities. In a shift, the Obama administration earlier this year said it would move from a long-time government focus on promoting home-ownership for all and instead steer people with low incomes toward renting where appropriate.

Congress has been considering whether to eliminate the federal tax deduction for home-mortgage interest, a popular incentive to home-buying that's been in place since the early 20th century.

Given depressed housing values that could continue for at least another four to five years, it now makes more sense in most cases to rent than own, Newport said.

Nationwide, the home-ownership rate fell to 65.1 percent — or 76 million occupied housing units that were owned by their residents — from 66.2 percent in 2000. That drop-off of 1.1 percentage points is the largest since 1940, when home-ownership plummeted 4.2 percentage points during the Great Depression to a low of 43.6 percent.

Since 1940, the number of Americans owning homes had steadily increased in each decennial census due to a mostly booming economy, favourable tax laws and easier financing. The one exception had been 1980-1990, when ownership remained unchanged at 64.2 percent.


Read full article here.

Panic of the Plutocrats (Paul Krugman)

Panic of the Plutocrats

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: October 9, 2011

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

 

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to “take the jobs away from people working in this city,” a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters “let their freak flags fly,” and are “aligned with Lenin.”

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Journalists Funded By ‘Vulture Capitalist’ Paul Singer Campaign To Smear Wall Street Protests

By Lee Fang 

The campaign to marginalize and destroy the growing 99 Percent Movement is in full swing, with many in the media attempting to smear the people participating in the “occupation” protests across the country. However, several of the so-called journalists deriding, and in some cases sabotaging the movement, have paychecks thanks to a billionaire whose business practices have been scorned as among the worst of the financial elite.
As the New York Times has documented, Paul Singer, a Republican activist and hedge fund manager worth over $900 million, has emerged as one of the most important power brokers within the GOP. Now, it appears that the reporters financed by Singer are at the forefront of efforts to tarnish the reputation of 99 Percent Movement demonstrators:

Journalist Who Admitted To Infiltrating Protests To ‘Mock And Undermine’ The Movement Works For A Singer-Supported Right-Wing Magazine. In a column posted last night, reporter Patrick Howley admitted that he had surreptitiously joined an anti-war spin-off group from the OccupyDC protests that planned to demonstrate at a military drone exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space museum. Howley wrote that he “infiltrated” the action and sprinted into the police along with a few protesters in order to “mock and undermine” the movement. Singer is a major donor to the Spectator, a right-wing magazine known for its role in the “Arkansas Project,” a well-funded effort to invent stories with the goal of eventually impeaching President Clinton.

Journalist Pushing To Discredit Occupy Wall Street Is Funded By Singer’s Think Tank. Josh Barro, a journalist who has attacked the 99 Percent Movement in the National Review and the New York Daily News, draws a salary from the Wriston Fellowship at the Manhattan Institute, a big business advocacy think tank in New York. Barro makes the same tired arguments, that anti-Wall Street protesters are too inarticulate and “extreme” to be taken seriously. Singer is the chairman of the Manhattan Institute, and even oversees the Wriston annual fundraiser.

Read More : Here

One of the Many Things Pundits Don't Get About Occupy Wall Street

42 comments

By Ian Murphy

Wednesday night, broadcasting from Liberty Square in lower Manhattan, MSNBC's Ed Schultz rhetorically asked his guests if the Democrats were the biggest winners of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The crowd laughed a little at the myopic spin.

Thursday, Rush Limbaugh – citing an unnamed, likely imaginary “friend” – said that Obama's actually behind Occupy Wall Street, and, laughably, that the President's been planning “riots” for months. Riots. Planning. For months.

Although I can easily imagine both of these guys ending up in the same ICU for similar gasket-blowing ailments, I'm not playing the false equivalence card. These individual acts of stupidity are not equal, but they are both incredibly wrong.

El Rushbo's lying. No one told him this. And if they did, that person (Herman Cain?) was lying. He's a leaky bucket of bile; these are known knowns.

Schultz isn't lying. But he is off by a mile. This movement is rooted deeper than America's shallow, money-infested political dichotomy, but, indeed, it's been fertilized by this Democratic Administration's bullshit.

Rush is right: a good number of these kids turned out for Obama. Some of the protesters I talked to last weekend will hold their noses and vote Obama in 2012. Some will not. And all of them are painfully aware that despite Limbaugh's – and other insane right-wing – charges of “socialism,” Obama is Jeb Bush with a better jump shot. They know Dodd-Frank is a watered down bowl of nothing. They know that both parties are bought and sold by the same moneyed interests. They know recessions are worsened by so-called “austerity” measures. They know this pay-to-play political paradigm must crumble, for democracy to function properly.

If the Democrats gain from this movement it will be by embracing the populist sentiment of the now nationwide occupation, and making good on it if elected. No doubt Dems will co-opt the message. But will they deliver? Will we see this real populist movement translated into policy, as we saw the fringe tea party set affect the national dialogue?

Speaking of false dichotomies, it's important to remember that only 11 percent of the adult population identifies with the tea party; 64 percent of Americans think we should institute a more progressive tax code; and a remarkable 77 percent of Republicans agree with Occupy Wall Street.

President Obama has expressed empathy for the protesters' frustrations. But saying it and doing it are two different things. If the Democratic party wants to remain viable in the long-term, it's time for them to walk the walk. They must give this dissatisfied generation a clear alternative to corporate governance, instead of ruling from the triangulating, big business “center.” The occupiers are not happy with Republican Lite. They don't like Jeb Bush.

Something new, albeit long-in-the-making, is here. And, just as money's influence on our politics, it transcends party affiliation. While Democrats may capitalize in the short-term by co-opting the populist #OWS message, these protesters are Legion. They do not forgive. They do not forget.

Why Ma and Pa America Can Get Behind Occupy Wall Street

By Brad Reed

 

Take that pitchfork down to Wall Street, man!

Good news, my fellow Americans: You don't have enjoy drum circles or want to free Mumia to support Occupy Wall Street! And there's a simple reason for this: Our political and economic elites have screwed all of us, not just out-of-work twenty-somethings. How have they done this, you ask? Let us count the ways:

• First, our political and business leaders have cheered on the decimation of America's manufacturing industries through trade pacts that open up American workers to competition from countries where workers have no rights and are paid something like negative-five billion cents per year. This has not only led to the destruction of millions of middle-class jobs but has given America an absurd current-account deficit where we basically import cheap crap from China and don't make much of anything ourselves anymore. See this graph:
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• At the same time our politicians and business leaders pursued policies that benefited the super rich at the expense of everyone else. Think income tax cuts, capital gains tax cuts, the repeal of Glass-Stegall, the deregulation of derivatives and the creation of a billion-zillion-katrillion loopholes in the tax code that let the super rich get away with paying fewer and fewer taxes. The result has, quite predictably, been a rise in income inequality See this graph:
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• To cover up the stink of good jobs disappearing and real wages stagnating, our politicians and business leaders assured us not to worry since we had access to all kinds of cheap crap and, even better, we could exponentially expand our credit through the miracles of modern finance! So even if you go deeper and deeper into debt to maintain your lifestyles and to pay for college and medical expenses, don't sweat it! You can always take out a home equity line of credit to pay the bills since home prices always, always, always go upupup and you can just sell your house for a higher price if all else fails! See this graph:
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• Except... ooops. Housing prices are plummeting...
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  ...and now you're stuck with a paying a mortgage on a house that is worth far, far less than it was just last year.
  (Note to my conservative friends: This isn't just a subprime problem for shifty inner-city layabouts. One-third of all prime mortgage loan borrowers are underwater as well.)

And this, then, is more or less the face of America in 2011: We're basically a nation of former factory workers who now work as Walmart greeters. As if that weren't bad enough, we are getting tossed out of our homes and are living in fear of coming down with any sort of illness because our crappy part-time job doesn't provide us with health insurance. And the reason we got ourselves into this mess in the first place is because we followed the advice of our best and brightest business and political leaders.

I mean, if you can't get pissed off about that you can't get pissed off about anything.