A little OWS humor courtesy of Stephen Colbert.

http://occupywallst.org/article/ketc...bert-optation/

Man, these guys are jack asses
 

I can't believe that NOW is the time that Wells Fargo is announcing their new bank for the "super rich". You only need to have 50 million to invest. Coming to a location near you (the first one open in Chicago in April)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/1..._lnk3%7C110362

What? You don't have at leat $50M to invest?

:-)))

i love all the stories of stuff videos

did you read the comments under this article? this one made me laugh....

"They are naming this after some carriage maker that catered to silly aristocrat­ic wannabees. A bank that serves only poor folks should be created and the name should be 1917 Revolution­ary Pride or Bastille Guillotine First National."

hahahahhahaa @ Bastille Guillotine First National

Something that has been on my mind about Bank Transfer Day is that there are so many people in the US that have had their credit completely ruined by the recession that they can't even get a bank account of any kind in either a bank or a credit union. And if they have been able to hang on to a checking account in a bank, they don't dare lose it. They will endure all the fees just to keep an account so they can pay bills from it, etc. and use a debit card to purchase goods.

Talk about entrapment! And the alternative to these people is pre-paid credit cards with large use fees or if they have an emergency, pay-day loans with over 400% in interest!!

Tell me, how the hell are these people going to get their credit back? What the hell are they going to do? this group is growing in leaps and bounds in the US. People that have been laid off and at the end of their UE benefits and any extensions are one month away fromfalling down this black hole.

Unemployment
 

I did some reading on this, as I wrote letters to my Republican senators for
voting No on the American Jobs Act. That would have brought 18,000 highway jobs alone here. We have horrible roads (they are just crumbling and always under construction) and the bridge situation is even worse. I guess it's going to take a major bridge to collapse with traffic on it before something gets done. Pittsburgh has 944 highway bridges. This amount does not include the train bridges. They are in just as bad of shape. (Obama and Biden were both here last month)

So anyhow, back to unemplyment. At the end of Decemeber, 5 million Americans will have exhausted tier four of UC. Thats 50 weeks of Unemployment compensation. The average check being $300. Can you imagine what the economy will look like when 5 million people stop spending a measly $300. Also, don't forget Obam's promise to have all of the Soldiers out of Iraq. Where are all of the jobs? There will be less, when that spending comes to a stop.

Extending UC has been seperated from the Jobs act, and has been given to the special committee to find a way to pay for an extension. MUM is the word.

I don't really know about that. When I opened my new Patelco credit union checking account, they didn't ask me to verify income or do a credit check at all. All I had to do was give them 20 bucks, and that went directly into my new account. They said I have to have a savings account too, however, they opened it for me and THEY put in $1.00 themselves (I still have my $20 in my checking). There is no minimum balance I have to keep in either account. I am allowed to have 6 overdrafts a month before they ding me with a fee for it!! Can you imagine Bank of America doing that???

I had to chuckle on this one. I loathe PATELCO Credit Union and I stopped using Bank of America about 25 years ago. When I moved to the Bay Area in 1991 I quickly joined a credit union that is now defunct. The credit union went under about three years ago and Patelco was delegated the credit union to take over the old credit union's accounts.

IMO, Patelco was nickle and diming me to death for every little service. My accounts with them were in no way near the minimums. They tried to get me to sign up for their Visa credit/debit card, I would not. The interest was too high. Very similar to what the banks were offering at that time. Needless to say, I switched credit unions after about 9 months of Patelco Hell.

I have very mixed feelings on the OWS movement. I do see a need for it and I also believe OWS is being co-opted by factions that have no real concern and comittment for the non-violent, law abiding, working and not able to find work democracy minded types.

One more banking story. I recently requested a refund from the labor union I am forced to pay dues too. I have no choice. The union calls this forced dues, "fees." In general, I support labor unions but through my involvment in the past with labor unions as an organizer and representative, I learned just how wasteful unions could also be with the money of the workers. I pay about $72 dollars a month to the union. I have been receiving their news, propoganda about the OWS movement and Pension Reform. I did not agree with much of it because I see the union information as yet another grab for more dollars to support their relevance or perceived relevance.

I did get refunded for some of my "fees" because the union's hand was forced by legal decisions made by the courts. I found it quite hypocritical to see that this union's check was from Wells Fargo. After receiving from the union information about how to support pulling our money from banks, the union itself is using Wells Fargo as their bank.

IMO, Wall Street is not the only culprit in this entire mess. We have the US Congress, Labor Unions, Laws being passed with no funding to enforce the laws, the electorial college, and Greed in general.

i was able to open a credit union account with a 5 dollar deposit into a savings acount and a 20 dollar deposit into the checking account. both accounts are free in the sense that i don't get dinged monthly for having the accounts and my checking account has no minimum balance. i can use my debit card from them, which they gave me on the spot instead of having to wait for it to be mailed, again, with no fees for usage. also, i don't get dinged for having automatic utility payments come right out of my checking account. i didn't have to be a teacher or in any type of special field to open it and they even gave me a free beverage cooler for opening the account. yay!!! there was no credit check or anything like that either.

also, as far as credit cards go, the green dot cards are pretty nifty. but i have a debit card so i have no need for them anyway. plus, i don't use credit anymore and haven't for quite some time, back around the time *I* felt that the credit card companies were getting way out of hand and that was long before there was a mass movement that put a spotlight on their horrible business practices.

additionally, the FICA system is designed to work against you. ever wonder why it takes absolute years to build your credit and just a month to destroy it? that's not an accident. the FICA system is designed to rate you on how much interest businesses (banks, lenders, corps, etc) can charge you. it's in their best interest to make your score as bad as possible to extract higher interest from you for as long as they can. homie don't play that. so i choose not to participate in that bullshit. is it hard? yes. but if i can't buy it outright, i just don't buy it. i don't see the sense in buying something that costs a dollar and spending 2 dollars just so i can have it sooner and thus lining the pockets of a bunch of faceless paper pushers with my hard won dough. i got into this argument with a prof of mine who debated that the interest you pay is offset by tax refunds and when i broke down the interest you pay on an average credit card and/or a car payment, the amount of money you ended up spending on interest could almost fund your retirement when added up over the lifetime of the loan. i mean, it's not hard to add up the bucks so you can see for yourself. and the worse your FICA score is, the more interest you pay. FICA is total bullshit and needs to be shit canned. worse system evar.

i have mixed feelings about unions as well and i'm glad you brought this up because i'm torn on this issue. i feel like unions had their place when working conditions were bad and there was a movement, not unlike this current one, to change that in America. i think the unions did a great job of making working conditions for Americans way better and i'm all for that.

however, that has not been my experience of unions in my lifetime. as a kid, my stepdad was the secretary treasurer of a huge union (i won't say which one or where) and when the pres of that union announced that he was going to retire, my stepdad ran for that position. i remember having security living at the house and having a security person escort me to school and stay with me at school all day because of the severity of the death threats and attempts of violence on our family. it was pretty scary. when the election happened, hundreds of votes came up missing and my mother threatened divorce if my stepdad chose to challenge the vote. so he let it go. he was then out of work for almost 2 years because no one would give him a job, not even any of the union houses.

fast forward to my very early 20s and i had gotten my CDL. i joined the union to get a good local job driving trucks and i was rerouted to hanging curtains at the convention center instead. my rep guy or whatever his official position was, told me that i could move faster through the A, B, and C "lists" and that i should go to dinner with him to "discuss my future." i left the union. i find lots of things about the current unions distasteful and corrupt.

that being said, i can't deny that unions have helped wages for all of us go up. there are industries that have lost their unions all together and are now fast becoming, if they aren't already, horrible jobs with little pay in dangerous working conditions (slaughterhouses jump to mind) and i feel like....where will we be with NO unions? we're going back to the times in our workforce that spawned unions to begin with. i don't know what the answer is or if there is an answer. i have this love hate feeling about unions and i haven't been able to make a decision on my position about them one way or the other.

If I have any trouble with Patelco, I will keep everyone here updated about it.

As for labor unions and mismanagement, yes there is definitely a history of some unions getting corrupted and working against the interests of their members. Not all labor unions are perfect. That is something that needs to be addressed too, because even a union go back on it's democratic principles and values of worker's rights. But not all unions are like this, and in general having strong unions does benefit all workers, union or not.

actually, i have lots more 'unions behaving badly' stories, i just posted the two that involved my personal experience. in fact, i have not seen, been involved with, or had friends that were in various unions that didn't have a horror story about it. there is clearly SOMEthing wrong with our unions across the board. but again, i feel like NO unions are equally as bad if not worse.

It feels like nothing that ever begins as a fair and honest enterprize ever escapes some form of corruption in the US. Unions are no exception. And I believe that they do not play as significant roll in worker's rights and treatment as they did during the Industrial Age- very different set of safety variables, for example. There are many very wealthy union "bosses" that really don't differ much than the Wall Street tycoons.

On the other hand, there exist labor unions, especially public employee unions that remain honest and truely on the side of employees. Also, it isn't a good idea to judge all standing trade unions by their national organizations- local shops have their own personalities and sense of justice.

Talk to some former Detroit assembly-line workers about the role of unions and job loss- and their stories are not always on the side of the union. many feel that unions played a large role in the decline of jobs because they did push wages and benefits out of bounds. Although, I have a problem with this in terms of the "Big 3" being "public" corporations that pay dividends to stock holders over and above the difference between gross receipts and obligations (including payrolls). Those "profits" we hear about are after all costs of doing business are paid and far and above a usual and customary profit margin that a private, independent business calculates and is required (by law) to stay within. The public corporations do not have the same rules to adhere to.

I waited with baited breath for the oganizational meeting of Occupy Pgh.
Much to my disappointment, I found out quickly how involved the unions wanted to be. They arranged for the sign paintings to take place at the union halls. They were setting up the Parade. I wasn't liking this. I didn't want to be a voice of the union. The unions were a big reason the Steel mills are no longer here and the entire reason coal mining hasn't been here for 25 years. I almost walked away.

However, the organizers of Occupy Pgh (appreciative of the unions help)
also didn't want this to be a union statement and somehow, someway, the semblance of Occupy took place and I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Opportunism, just what I have grown to dislike about unions, in general,taking selfish advantage of circumstances with little regard for principles.

As a veteran, I am looking to figure out which of the many military credit unions I will join. I did take what money I have out of Wells Fargo. I am stuck with Wells Fargo because I need a bank in New Mexico as well as in Oakland. However, I can move my money every month to a credit union.

Any military/veterans out there who can make a credit union recommendation?

I am not a fan of unions for a myriad of reasons. Most have to do with the mandatory monthly dues regardless of work status, as well as calling for strikes when there is a no strike clause in the agreements.

I do however vehemently support collective bargaining.

If anyone wants to hear a union story and how much that particular union hated my outspoken ass....I will tell the story....blah blah blah no strike clause....dishonest....blah blah blah...liquor store clerks in WA.....teamsters will support not delivering booze in a state controlled booze enviornment??? blah blah blah.....attempted recruitment as a union organizer over rusty nails in a bar with men in 1000 dollar suits and me in boots and levis.....blah blah blah.......

However much like my opinion on abortion I am radically different today...well most days until I remember union dues (on a 20-30 hour work week) of 11 bucks per 2 week pay period....in the 70's.

Unions are corrupted by money in exactly the same way politicians are corrupted by money.

George Carlin nailed it when he talked about bankers:

I'm having trouble with all this union bashing. There are corrupt politicians, corrupt CEOs, welfare cheats, corrupt U.S. Army Officers, people on disability who have no actual disability, and there are corrupt unions and/or union reps. If it's possible to steal money from a government program or to violate the trust of people whose money you manage, someone will find a way to do so. To say 'I'm not a fan of unions because they can be corrupt' is a lot like saying we should abolish welfare or disability payments because there are welfare/disability cheats. It's myopic to ignore the greater good because someone is cheating somewhere.

I belong to two unions. While the first union I joined isn't quite overrun with pervasive corruption, it is a hotbed of cronyism and is a perfect picture of how the good ol' boy network still works it's magic. I actually have evidence that two business agents sold out the contract at a theatre where I worked about 25 yrs ago. Even with all that, this union has the power to sit down at the table with very wealthy and powerful producers/managers to get and keep a decent middle class wage for it's members, as well as providing health insurance, pension and other benefits. We're freelancers. There is NO WAY that I or any of the other people I worked with in that jurisdiction could EVER have gotten any of the above for ourselves. If the union wasn't sitting at the bargaining table we would have been paid like crap, would have never received overtime payment, would have no official days off, would not have health care coverage, or a pension to retire with. How can I be so sure of this? Because I didn't always have a union card. The difference between the wages I was able to earn plus the benefits for which I became eligible once I had a union card, and how I lived before I was represented by this union, even with it's questionable ethical standing, is astonishing. I say that as someone who has no family connections whatsoever, and as someone who only was allowed to become a member because that union was under court order to allow women in. Yeah, they sucked in a lot of ways, just like corporate culture would have sucked and would have kept my female ass out of every position except the housekeeping staff had they been allowed.

I haven't worked in that jurisdiction since 1990. I was able to join a related union that represents scenic artists, and never looked back. I get paid by the hour to be a sculptor. Not only do I get pension benefits, a 401k, a safety specialist who shows up to make sure we're not getting poisoned and health insurance, I make an even better hourly wage. Once again, none of us would have had the smallest chance of negotiating these pay scales, working conditions, or benefits packages on our own. Frankly, I wouldn't even know where to start negotiating benefits. The formulae are waaaaay too complex. My specialty is sculptural scenery, not managing funds and benefits. And guess what? This union is freakin' squeaky clean. Not one of the people in leadership positions in this union has even the whiff of corruption or of cronyism around them. Even those who have emotional disagreements with the leadership about some issue or other never think to accuse anyone of corruption, because there just isn't any. This union once had a suspect business agent in the mid 1990s and we were were all pretty disgusted. Frankly, if it was true his corruption was incredibly minor compared to my previous union, and he looks like an angel compared to your average corporate shark. But everyone else in a leadership position in this union is so darned ethical that he looked bad enough to be heaved out.

For those who think that unions are no longer needed, consider Wallmart. 'Nuff said. And once again drawing from personal experience, unions continue to set the industry standard even when they don't have jurisdiction in that workplace. A major entertainment company that I'll only refer to as Mauschwitz has a pervasive anti-union corporate culture. But their in-house artists benefit greatly from the gains our union has made. They routinely get offered any new benefit which our union secures for our membership. Why? Because the Mauschwitz Corporation knows that they can only keep their artists from joining us by making sure that they get nothing less than we do. The next time you're tempted to bash unions, stop and ask yourself if Ford/Chrysler/GM wouldn't immediately start paying Wallmart wages and imposing Wallmart conditions if they were allowed abrogate their union contracts and obligations.

OK. I'm done now.

just a chime on the unions. I am not a member of our union because I am a first line supervisor. I support our Union because my guys need the protection but I worry that will the union show up if the guys need them they already had to swich to a diffrent due to corruption. I belong to the FOP and that gives me support. As a police officer we need the union protection

I don't see Union bashing. I see pointing out that Unions are not perfect and there are long-standing issues that Unions have never addressed.

I still completely and totally support collective bargaining.....the real point of Labor Unions. I have huge issues with bad ethics........signing an agreement with a no-strike clause and then going on strike. Union bosses getting paid full salaries while folks on strike are missing house payments. Union bosses dumped in cement. It's not all myth.

None of that is Union bashing. It's simply pointing out the reality. I cannot, with any kind of ethics, rant and rave about money in politics, corruption, inequitable salary ranges from top to bottom, and all the other blah blah blah without calling Unions to task also. Unions do the same things. Unions should be forced to clean up their act. We need them to be ethical if they are going to be a viable force for social change. They need to put their money where their mouth resides....and posters are not money....

As I said.....not a big fan of standing labor unions, but a die-hard unflinching supporter of collective bargaining.

i worked as a public employee... and our union was seiu (huge corporation that is taking over monterey bay and in my experience has not had the workers best interest in mind and has been in the midst of controversy on more than one occasion). maybe we're the exception and not the rule... but i suspect this is happening all over.

It is in the best interest of the 1% to keep us divided along any lines available. We are encouraged to divide ethnically and religiously and we have always been taught to look below us on the socio-economic scale for the cause of any financial difficulties we might encounter. Now we are being encouraged to consider an intergenerational division. Whatever it takes to keep us divided and at each others' throats

Here they come again with a new approach to get at Social Security. And since income greater than $90,000 is not subject to Social Security taxation I can feel comfortable making the claim that the money comes from the 98%. And not just SSI will be at risk if they succeed in turning us against ourselves. This new report, as well as some purposely misleading articles I have read recently, will supply ideal fodder to encourage changes in Medicare. Or reforms as they will be called. Unfortunately the “reforms” sought after will do nothing to lower the cost of healthcare and instead redirect more of the burden onto the backs of seniors.

Check out this article about a new and very misleading report.


Pew Report on Young-Old Wealth Gap is Misleading and Divisive; Could Fuel Intergenerational Class War


Those gunning for Social Security are already using the study to divide the "other 99 percent."

http://www.alternet.org/economy/1530...ss_war/?page=3

I'm sure your friends experience is true, however, the Longshoreman strike of 1934 on the West Coast (San Francisco and Oakland, California, Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington- the "Albion Hall group") was a significant union movement helping thousands of these workers.

It is hard for me at times when talking "unions" because so many of the early (post WW I) work of labor unions for blue collar workers ans well as women and childrens worker rights is so important in terms of changes in safety and health for US workers. Work weeks, breaks, child labor laws, the advent of the "week end," etc. are things we take for granted today and there were bloody (as was the 1934 Longshoreman strike and all of the women killed in the "Triangle Shirtwaste Fire" of 1911) strikes and demonstrations by and for very hard working people being treated like dirt.

I do see a huge difference in what early union fights were about and what goes on today. There is a lot of cronyism and corruption at the top of union organizing. I can't help but feel thankful for early union organizing and what this has mean't for the US worker. Yet, I can see where members today are not fairly represented by them at all. And also when unions have hurt worker job security in the long run by not working with industries during times in which major economic changes have caused huge shrinkage in numbers of available jobs simply based upon supply and demand.

On the other hand, large companies (including the Big 3 in Detroit) failed to adjust their factory output during these times and did not re-tool factories for production of the kind of cars that became more popular during fuel shortages and with the influx of Japanese cars into the US. These trade agreements were known by these companies, yet they made no adjustments. Unions continued to bargain from obsolete positions which I think hurt workers deeply during the decline of the industrial age and the start of the US expanding into world markets. And the information age began and this has changed the face of the US workforce forever as well as expanded global economies that we have to compete in.

I'm not sure that union organizers made adjustments as well- there are differences in the kinds of health and safety variables within the information age than in the earlier manufacturing economy in the US.

I don't think it is all about the "good" or "bad" about unions. I think it is more about work force and union adaptations to what is best for workers in a very different world of work. So often, it just feels like apples and oranges being compared to me.

*checking in*
 

I've been rather quiet lately, but with good reason: I like to take my time in processing whether information presented is in the best interest of those who are affected most by social inequality. I want to use my power wisely and to help faciliate, participate in the orchestration, and unite of the voice of the many who suffer egregious conditions of social inequality (at an OWS movement level).

I want to say thank you so much to the author of this thread (AZ), the collective voice of members who contribute toward the ongoing conversation in progress and to Miss Tick - who recently posted an article published by the organization called The Pew. I respect the authorship of articles from The Pew because of neutral scientific process that is inductive, quasilateral by design and inspects highly dialogical process in dialectical fashion. SoOoOOoOo, Kudos to The Pew!!!

I leave tonight for a national conference to present my graduate work on the Aristotelian canon of Memoria: Connecting Elie Wiesel’s voice to modern day accounts of whose voice counts most toward a credible accounting of the intelligentsia, the legitimatia, of memory. The same rubric of methodology in pedagogic form is, in my opinion, crucial to the OWS movement and already I see a way, as a Communication scholar, to connect present day accountings of whose voice counts most in OWS public discourse. The elements of indexicality & iconicity of the OWS movement points solidly toward the current trained incapacity of a US-centric condition - the disparity between those who have and those who have not (+/- variables of sets of data which may or may not be completely accurate due to reporting mechanisms that do not capture all sets of data needed for this process due to human based parameters within, currently held and socially constructed, human policy, etc.).

Here at home, in the paper (was it yesterday or the day before?) our Mayor, Sam Adams, has been instrumental in diffusing and redirecting and reassessing on a 24/7 basis in support of OWS and although there are not as many people participating in the first weeks of the movement, we still have people devoted to the cause -- they actually chained themselves to a barrel with bike locks! I stop by daily and visit with people and support this cause, whether it's first thing in the morning or on my way home.

Please know I appreciate each and every one of you here who have the time and energy to keep this conversation moving and igniting the hearts of those who have yet to find ways to support this cause.

*Thank You, to each and every one of you*

~D

I found this article to be humorous and horrifying in equal measure.


The 1% Are the Very Best Destroyers of Wealth the World Has Ever Seen

Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt
by George Monbiot

If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes. [(Illustration by Daniel Pudles)] (Illustration by Daniel Pudles)

The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize, are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their apparent success is a cognitive illusion. For example, he studied the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years. He found that the consistency of their performance was zero. "The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill." Those who received the biggest bonuses had simply got lucky.

Such results have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him. "The illusion of skill … is deeply ingrained in their culture."

So much for the financial sector and its super-educated analysts. As for other kinds of business, you tell me. Is your boss possessed of judgment, vision and management skills superior to those of anyone else in the firm, or did he or she get there through bluff, bullshit and bullying?

In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. They compared the results to the same tests on patients at Broadmoor special hospital, where people who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. On certain indicators of psychopathy, the bosses's scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients. In fact, on these criteria, they beat even the subset of patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders.

The psychopathic traits on which the bosses scored so highly, Board and Fritzon point out, closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for. Those who have these traits often possess great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people. Egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, a readiness to exploit others and a lack of empathy and conscience are also unlikely to damage their prospects in many corporations.

In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school.

This is not to suggest that all executives are psychopaths. It is to suggest that the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills. As the bosses have shaken off the trade unions and captured both regulators and tax authorities, the distinction between the productive and rentier upper classes has broken down. Chief executives now behave like dukes, extracting from their financial estates sums out of all proportion to the work they do or the value they generate, sums that sometimes exhaust the businesses they parasitise. They are no more deserving of the share of wealth they've captured than oil sheikhs.

The rest of us are invited, by governments and by fawning interviews in the press, to subscribe to their myth of election: the belief that they are possessed of superhuman talents. The very rich are often described as wealth creators. But they have preyed on the earth's natural wealth and their workers' labour and creativity, impoverishing both people and planet. Now they have almost bankrupted us. The wealth creators of neoliberal mythology are some of the most effective wealth destroyers the world has ever seen.

What has happened over the past 30 years is the capture of the world's common treasury by a handful of people, assisted by neoliberal policies which were first imposed on rich nations by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I am now going to bombard you with figures. I'm sorry about that, but these numbers need to be tattooed on our minds. Between 1947 and 1979, productivity in the US rose by 119%, while the income of the bottom fifth of the population rose by 122%. But from 1979 to 2009, productivity rose by 80%, while the income of the bottom fifth fell by 4%. In roughly the same period, the income of the top 1% rose by 270%.

In the UK, the money earned by the poorest tenth fell by 12% between 1999 and 2009, while the money made by the richest 10th rose by 37%. The Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality, climbed in this country from 26 in 1979 to 40 in 2009.

In his book The Haves and the Have Nots, Branko Milanovic tries to discover who was the richest person who has ever lived. Beginning with the loaded Roman triumvir Marcus Crassus, he measures wealth according to the quantity of his compatriots' labour a rich man could buy. It appears that the richest man to have lived in the past 2,000 years is alive today. Carlos Slim could buy the labour of 440,000 average Mexicans. This makes him 14 times as rich as Crassus, nine times as rich as Carnegie and four times as rich as Rockefeller.

Until recently, we were mesmerised by the bosses' self-attribution. Their acolytes, in academia, the media, thinktanks and government, created an extensive infrastructure of junk economics and flattery to justify their seizure of other people's wealth. So immersed in this nonsense did we become that we seldom challenged its veracity.

This is now changing. On Sunday evening I witnessed a remarkable thing: a debate on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral between Stuart Fraser, chairman of the Corporation of the City of London, another official from the corporation, the turbulent priest Father William Taylor, John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network and the people of Occupy London. It had something of the flavour of the Putney debates of 1647. For the first time in decades – and all credit to the corporation officials for turning up – financial power was obliged to answer directly to the people.

It felt like history being made. The undeserving rich are now in the frame, and the rest of us want our money back.

I just came across this video. It's from Oakland but I just saw it for the first time on Common Dreams today. It would be funny if it wasn't so horrible.

Thanks for posting this. I have seen countless images of what these so called "non-lethal weapons" do to people and it makes me sick. Sicker that they are used against our own citizens exercizing Constitutional rights. I may not agree with some of the tactics used by demonstrators that I feel end up hurting the very people the Occupy movement is viewed as representing. But, I just cannot abide by this.

It is one thing when a crowd is armed and out of control, but quite another when unarmed anda agitated. Sometimes, I think that it would be best for police to just have a perimeter established around demonstrations (no fences or anything- just identify by landmarks) for obervation only and have emergency vehicles available at certain points with EMTs and fire personnel and just stay back and let the crowd find its own way to calm. Yes, some graffiti and probably smashed windows will happen, but I have yet to see in all of the coverage of the OWS instances where the bulk of demonstrators that have been out there for 9over 50 days not try to calm others down. There are several videos I have watched where the 98/99ers are very clear with not wanting outside groups to turn this into something is not- an anarchist revolution. These are people trying to be heard that feel like our systems do not represent the common good.

I am in no way any expert in crowd or riot control, but do know something about human behavior. Even with agitated group think going on, good sense arises among groups and people see that others can be hurt and that will not help their cause. People will self-regulate to bring about calm. Also, OWS folks are in constant conversation with factions all across the US (and the world) and it certainly looks to me like non-violence is at the core of this movement.

Don't even get me started on how I feel about how the manufacturers present the "non-lethality" of these kinds of weapons, including stun guns/Tasers. They can kill and they do mame people permanently.

Also, some of this footage brings me back to watching the military and the people in Egypt during Arab Spring. The soldiers did not want to hurt their own people. There have been reports by police officers here stating that using force on people at the OWS protests just does not feel right to them. They are in the 98/99% too.

Yeah I saw it on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night. Disgusted and horrified me.

The thing that is most disgusting about this is the videographer was asking the police if it was ok for him to be filming them at that distance and as the video clearly shows, instead of answering him with words, they shot him with a rubber bullet. Grrr...

Great articles, posts and videos - thank you all.

I heard an interview this morning on WBEZ Chicago with author Richard Wilkinson. It feels like there's a growing groundswell of people calling for a more just and equitable society. Wilkinson offers some good reasons why in Spirit Level: Why more equal societies almost always do better.

http://www.releasedates.com/pics/boo...s-stronger.jpg

The way we live now

A hard-hitting study of the social effects of inequality has profound implications, says Lynsey Hanley

We are rich enough. Economic growth has done as much as it can to improve material conditions in the developed countries, and in some cases appears to be damaging health. If Britain were instead to concentrate on making its citizens' incomes as equal as those of people in Japan and Scandinavia, we could each have seven extra weeks' holiday a year, we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we'd trust each other more.

Epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett don't soft-soap their message. It is brave to write a book arguing that economies should stop growing when millions of jobs are being lost, though they may be pushing at an open door in public consciousness. We know there is something wrong, and this book goes a long way towards explaining what and why.

The authors point out that the life-diminishing results of valuing growth above equality in rich societies can be seen all around us. Inequality causes shorter, unhealthier and unhappier lives; it increases the rate of teenage pregnancy, violence, obesity, imprisonment and addiction; it destroys relationships between individuals born in the same society but into different classes; and its function as a driver of consumption depletes the planet's resources.

Wilkinson, a public health researcher of 30 years' standing, has written numerous books and articles on the physical and mental effects of social differentiation. He and Pickett have compiled information from around 200 different sets of data, using reputable sources such as the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Health Organisation and the US Census, to form a bank of evidence against inequality that is impossible to deny.

They use the information to create a series of scatter-graphs whose patterns look nearly identical, yet which document the prevalence of a vast range of social ills. On almost every index of quality of life, or wellness, or deprivation, there is a gradient showing a strong correlation between a country's level of economic inequality and its social outcomes. Almost always, Japan and the Scandinavian countries are at the favourable "low" end, and almost always, the UK, the US and Portugal are at the unfavourable "high" end, with Canada, Australasia and continental European countries in between.

This has nothing to do with total wealth or even the average per-capita income. America is one of the world's richest nations, with among the highest figures for income per person, but has the lowest longevity of the developed nations, and a level of violence - murder, in particular - that is off the scale. Of all crimes, those involving violence are most closely related to high levels of inequality - within a country, within states and even within cities. For some, mainly young, men with no economic or educational route to achieving the high status and earnings required for full citizenship, the experience of daily life at the bottom of a steep social hierarchy is enraging.

The graphs also reveal that it is not just the poor, but whole societies, from top to bottom, that are adversely affected by inequality. Although the UK fares badly when compared with most other OECD countries (and is the worst developed nation in which to be a child according to both Unicef and the Good Childhood Inquiry), its social problems are not as pronounced as in the US.

Rates of illness are lower for English people of all classes than for Americans, but working-age Swedish men fare better still. Diabetes affects twice as many American as English people, whether they have a high or a low level of education. Wherever you look, evidence favouring greater equality piles up. As the authors write, "the relationships between inequality and poor health and social problems are too strong to be attributable to chance".

But perhaps the most troubling aspect of reading this book is the revelation that the way we live in Britain is a serious danger to our mental health. Around a quarter of British people, and more than a quarter of Americans, experience mental problems in any given year, compared with fewer than 10 per cent in Japan, Germany, Sweden and Italy.

Wilkinson and Pickett's description of unequal societies as "dysfunctional" suggests implicit criticism of the approach taken by Britain's "happiness tsar" Richard Layard, who recommended that the poor mental health of many Britons be "fixed" or improved by making cognitive behavioural therapy more easily available. Consumerism, isolation, alienation, social estrangement and anxiety all follow from inequality, they argue, and so cannot rightly be made a matter of individual management.

There's an almost pleading quality to some of Wilkinson and Pickett's assertions, as though they feel they've spent their careers banging their heads against a brick wall. It's impossible to overstate the implications of their thesis: that the societies of Britain and the US have institutionalised economic and social inequality to the extent that, at any one time, a quarter of their respective populations are mentally ill. What kind of "growth" is that, other than a malignant one?

One question that comes to mind is whether the world's most equal developed nations, Japan and Sweden, make sufficient allowance for individuals to express themselves without being regarded as a threat to the health of the collective. Critics of the two societies would argue that both make it intensely difficult for individual citizens to protest against the conformity both produced by, and required to sustain, equality. The inclination to dismiss or neuter individuals' complaints may, Wilkinson and Pickett suggest, go some way towards explaining the higher suicide rates in both countries compared with their more unequal counterparts. Those who feel wrong, or whose lives go wrong, may feel as though they really do have no one to blame but themselves.

What Japan and Sweden do show is that equality is a matter of political will. There are belated signs - shown in the recent establishment of a National Equalities Panel and in Trevor Phil lips's public pronouncements on the central place of class in the landscape of British inequality - that Labour recognises that its relaxed attitude to people "getting filthy rich" has come back to bite it on the rear.

Twelve years in power is long enough to reverse all the trends towards greater social and economic stratification that have occurred since 1970; instead they have continued on their merry way towards segregation. Teenage pregnancy rates have begun to rise after a period of decline; there is a 30-year gap in male life expectancy between central Glasgow and parts of southern England; and child poverty won't be halved by next year after all (though it wouldn't make as much difference as making their parents more equal).

There are times when the book feels rather too overwhelmingly grim. Even if you allow for the fact that it was written before Barack Obama won the US presidency on a premise of trust and optimism, its opening pages are depressing enough to make you want to shut it fast: "We find ourselves anxiety-ridden, prone to depression, driven to consume and with little or no community life." Taking the statistics broadly, they may be correct, but many readers simply won't feel like that.

However, the book does end on an optimistic note, with a transformative, rather than revolutionary, programme for making sick societies more healthy. A society in which all citizens feel free to look each other in the eye can only come into being once those in the lower echelons feel more valued than at present. The authors argue that removal of economic impediments to feeling valued - such as low wages, low benefits and low public spending on education, for instance - will allow a flourishing of human potential.

There is a growing inventory of serious, compellingly argued books detailing the social destruction wrought by inequality. Wilkinson and Pickett have produced a companion to recent bestsellers such as Oliver James's Affluenza and Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety . But The Spirit Level also contributes to a longer view, sitting alongside Richard Sennett's 2003 book Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality , and the epidemiologist Michael Marmot's Status Syndrome , from 2005.

Anyone who believes that society is the result of what we do, rather than who we are, should read these books; they should start with The Spirit Level because of its inarguable battery of evidence, and because its conclusion is simple: we do better when we're equal.

Well wishes can be sent to Scott Olsen via this website-

http://www.scottolsen.org/thanks-and...-your-recovery

From the Long Beach Post
 

From Long Beach, CA

9:15pm | In the largest show of civil disobedience in Occupy Long Beach's one-month existence, about 40 group members disrupted Tuesday night's city council meeting in an attempt to force the council to address OLB's request that Lincoln Park be fashioned temporarily into a 24-hour-per-day "free-speech zone" that allows for the use of tents.

Interspersed between speakers during an open public comment period near the beginning that included requests that the City entice the Rainforest Cafe to set up shop downtown and ratify the Constitution for the Federation of Earth, three members of OLB spoke before a fourth, Tammara Phillips, asked the council whether it was "prepared to hear the 40 or so speakers that we have [here] this evening to discuss a free-speech zone."

When informed by Vice-Mayor Suja Lowenthal (presiding over the meeting in the absence of Mayor Bob Foster) that the issue was not on the evening's agenda, Phillips addressed the gallery.

"Occupy Long Beach," she began, "do you request a resolution establishing free-speech zone . . ." — at which point Lowenthal cut her off.

Phillips then led the group in a sort of pledge, over which Lowenthal admonished her that "this is no way to have your item agendized. You are out of order." When the pledge continued, Lowethnal called for the police officers present to escort Phillips away from the microphone. Chants of "The whole world is watching!" followed, and when Lowenthal's attempts to restore order were unsuccessful, the vice-mayor recessed the meeting.

As most of the council members vacated their seats (only council members Robert Garcia, Gerrie Schipske and Rae Gabelich remained in the room), roughly a dozen police officers streamed into the room as OLBers chanted "We are the 99%!" and "Your silence will not protect you!"

One officer could been holding dozens of zip ties, indicating that the police were prepared to make arrests if need be, but no protestors were detained at any time, and most of the officers present seemed relatively relaxed, one of them even engaging in cordial conversation with the protestor nearest the front of the chamber. At one point the protestors even broke into a chant of "Cops need a raise!" which elicited smiles from several officers.

But it was the chant of "Put us on the agenda!" that spoke specifically to why the OLBers were there, and when the councilmembers returned to the chamber roughly 15 minutes later, Councilmember Rae Gabelich defused the situation by offering to agendize the issue for the November 15 council meeting. Satisfied, the protestors filed out of the chamber.

Apparently what was the last straw in making the OLBers mad as hell and not willing to take this anymore stemmed from what may have been a misunderstanding involving Gabelich, as OLBers say they had understood her to have promised to agendize the "free-speech zone" issue for Tuesday's meeting. However, Gabelich claims this was a misunderstanding; and various city staffers have stated that some members of the council received OLB's "resolution" only Monday, while others had not received it at all.

While the matter is to be agendized for next week, Gabelich stated unequivocally that "the ordinance [prohibiting camping in the park] is not going to change," and that OLB should "look for an alternative site. … I believe in the Occupy movement. I think the message is a good one. But we have to find creative alternatives."

Even as OLBers succeeded in getting themselves on next week's city council agenda, some outside the group feel they did not do themselves any favors. One person in attendance was overheard to say that OLB could have gotten its resolution on the council agenda via means that would not have been as alienating to the city council, while another complained, "These leeches who don't work and offer nothing to society are going to destroy everyone's rights. … They only care about their own free speech."

What is clear is that the 40 OLBers in attendance were quite prepared to face arrest if they had not gotten what they wanted — even if exactly how the evening's events transpired was not completely scripted. "We had talked about what we were going to do beforehand," Demos told me after the meeting, "but once these things get going, they sort of go their own way."

Call it the joys and perils of a leaderless movement. And at least as far as the Long Beach goes, says Demos, it's a movement comprised mostly of persons with little experience in political protests.

Perhaps that's fitting, considering that Long Beach is not exactly the most experienced city when it comes to this sort of thing.

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I'm glad to see this for myself. ! Go OWS !

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Queer table at OWS in NYC!
The pink sign says "Trans-form the Occupation"

Yes!
 

Missoula Voters Say Corporations Are Not People, Demand Constitutional Amendment


November 8, 2011

By: Keila Szpaller

The Missoulian

Corporations aren't people, an overwhelming 75 percent of Missoula voters said Tuesday, and they don't want corporations treated like people either.

"I'm over the moon about it," said Councilwoman Cynthia Wolken, who brought the referendum to the Missoula City Council to place on the ballot.
The measure - similar to others across the country - calls on the U.S. Congress and state leaders to amend the U.S. Constitution to say that "corporations are not human beings." It earned 10,729 votes in favor and 3,605 against.

The resolution isn't binding, but it does send a message that's gaining momentum nationwide. Wolken said she planned on being satisfied to capture more than 50 percent of the vote, "really happy" with more than 60 percent, and "over the moon" with anything more.

"Basically, it affirmed what we were all seeing on the streets, which is the average Missoulian wanted to have their voice heard ... and they want their elected officials to fix the problem of corporate personhood," Wolken said. "So I hope this message is heard and we get started on fixing the problem."

As she sees it, corporations have been given too much power, and as stated in the Missoula resolution, their "profits and survival are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and rights of human beings." The movement to amend the U.S. Constitution launched in earnest in January 2010 after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision on Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, overruling two precedents. It stated the government can't ban campaign spending on elections by corporations because that would be unduly regulating speech.

According to the local resolution, the ruling on Citizens United corrupts one foundation of democracy by "rolling back legal limits on corporate spending in the electoral process."

"(The decision) ... allows unlimited corporate spending to influence elections, candidate selection, policy decisions and sway votes," reads the Missoula resolution. Councilwoman Wolken said the Missoula city clerk likely will prepare a letter to send to state and national leaders urging the amendment once the office has finished work on a more pressing priority, replacing the Municipal Court judge. She also said she expects action from state legislators as well.

"I have no doubt that when the legislative session starts back up, that this will be on the top of the list," Wolken said.

Read more: http://missoulian.com/news/local/mis...#ixzz1dBmlCZqE

or at-
http://movetoamend.org/news/missoula...onal-amendment

Rep. Joe Walsh yells at constituents: Don’t blame the banks

Republican Rep. Joe Walsh of Illinois became noticeably upset during a meeting with his constituents in Gurnee over the weekend after it was suggested that financial regulatory reform would be beneficial.

One person in the UNO Bar & Grill pointed out that people in the banking industry often occupied positions at federal agencies charged with regulating the financial sector.

“I agree with you about that,” he yelled. “That’s not the problem!”

“The problem is you’ve got to be consistent,” Walsh said. “And I don’t want government meddling in the marketplace. Yeah, they move from Goldman Sachs to the White House, I understand all of that. But you gotta’ be consistent. And it’s not the private marketplace that created this mess. What created mess this mess is your government, which has demanded for years that everybody be in a home. And we’ve made it easy as possible for people to be in homes. All the marketplace does is respond to what the government does. The government sets the rules.”

“Don’t blame banks, and don’t blame the marketplace for the mess we’re in right now,” he continued. “I am tired of hearing that crap!”



The problem is you've got to be consistent he says. Well he certainly is that as is the republican party in general. They are still spouting the same old bull shit about people buying homes they can't afford being the cause of the financial crisis being heard around the world. I'm sure pressed he would explain about it being the fault of minorities buying those houses they couldn't afford.

I wonder what he means buy saying "your government". Is it no longer his government? He's washing his hands of it I guess.