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: