OCCUPY WALL STREET

[Diavolo]

Originally Posted by persiphone

gee i can't imagine. we are just expendable trash after all. who wouldn't want us to know that? the count was 2700 soldiers. i'm sure there's more. mebbe no one wants the comparison drawn of mass body graves of the past? cuz Bush started it and it was clearly never ended by the current administration? cuz it's beyond disgusting? i could go on and on.

The article on NPR said that it stopped in 2008. The WP article says between 2004-2008 as well. I don't know for sure, but it is my impression that it stopped in 2008. Probably when someone had to have someone from the Obama administration sign off which wasn't going to happen.

[persiphone]

Originally Posted by Diavolo

The article on NPR said that it stopped in 2008. The WP article says between 2004-2008 as well. I don't know for sure, but it is my impression that it stopped in 2008. Probably when someone had to have someone from the Obama administration sign off which wasn't going to happen.

thanks for that correction. my sheer disgust overpowered me in my response.

[persiphone]

so this was the response i got from the Senator in my home state after signing the petition on the National Defense Authorization Act.....

December 9, 2011





Ms. ********
730 ******* RD
******, NV *****-0325


Dear Ms. ******:


Thank you for contacting me about detainee provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. I appreciate hearing from you.


On January 22, 2009, President Obama signed a series of executive orders regarding national security policy. As you know, these directives ordered the eventual closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which had become a potent recruiting symbol for anti-American militant extremists; established a process for determining which detainees can be brought to justice in other countries and which detainees can begin to be prosecuted for terrorist acts; and renewed America's commitment to prohibiting torture. These are tough and complex issues, but, like you, I believe very strongly that strengthening our fight against terrorists required these changes. Our military leaders, officials from our intelligence and diplomatic corps, and bipartisan members of Congress all believe that revising our detention and interrogation methods of suspected terrorists will lead more effectively to a strategic defeat of Al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups, and ultimately, a safer America.


In order to effectively combat terrorism within the complex legal and strategic landscape in which we operate, the Administration must also maintain maximum flexibility to apply each of the different tools in our counterterrorism toolbox for each different case in order to ensure intelligence is not lost, the public is not harmed, and terrorists are not set free. While this practical approach has been adopted by the current Administration, some in Congress continue to seek to tie the Administration's hands. As you noted, the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, as reported by the Senate Armed Services Committee, includes provisions that would, among other things, mandate the use of military custody for individuals suspected of terrorism-related offenses, even if arrested in the United States. In an important recent speech, Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan expressed the Administration's concerns about these provisions and other proposals in Congress to limit the Administration's flexibility in its approach to counterterrorism. He stated that under the approach advocated by some in Congress:


"[W]e would never be able to turn the page on Guantanamo. Our counterterrorism professionals would be compelled to hold all captured terrorists in military custody, casting aside our most effective and time-tested tool for bringing suspected terrorists to justice - our federal courts. .In sum, this approach would impose unprecedented restrictions on the ability of experienced professionals to combat terrorism, injecting legal and operational uncertainty into what is already enormously complicated work."


I have been working diligently to improve the detainee-related provisions in the legislation. After the Armed Services Committee first completed their work on the bill, I wrote to the Chair and Ranking Member of the Committee to express my concerns with the provisions and urge further changes. The Committee ultimately reported out a new version of the bill with significant improvements to the detainee provisions. Nevertheless, some important concerns remained.


During consideration of the bill on the Senate floor, I worked with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and others to secure passage of an amendment preventing application of the detention provisions in the bill to United States citizens, lawful resident aliens, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States (S.AMDT.1456). This amendment maintains the constitutional protections of due process and fair judicial proceedings for individuals arrested within the United States, and is an important addition to the bill.


Nevertheless, I am not satisfied that all of the concerns with the detainee provisions have been adequately addressed. As the bill proceeds to a House-Senate conference committee, you can be sure that I will continue to seek additional improvements. It is critical that we maintain a detention policy that gives our counterterrorism professionals the flexibility, capability, and resources they need to effectively apply all of our national security tools toward bringing terrorists to justice.


Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.


My best wishes to you.


Sincerely,
A
HARRY REID
United States Senator
Nevada


this feels like smoke up my ass.

[atomiczombie]

Originally Posted by persiphone

so this was the response i got from the Senator in my home state after signing the petition on the National Defense Authorization Act.....

December 9, 2011





Ms. ********
730 ******* RD
******, NV *****-0325


Dear Ms. ******:


Thank you for contacting me about detainee provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. I appreciate hearing from you.


On January 22, 2009, President Obama signed a series of executive orders regarding national security policy. As you know, these directives ordered the eventual closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which had become a potent recruiting symbol for anti-American militant extremists; established a process for determining which detainees can be brought to justice in other countries and which detainees can begin to be prosecuted for terrorist acts; and renewed America's commitment to prohibiting torture. These are tough and complex issues, but, like you, I believe very strongly that strengthening our fight against terrorists required these changes. Our military leaders, officials from our intelligence and diplomatic corps, and bipartisan members of Congress all believe that revising our detention and interrogation methods of suspected terrorists will lead more effectively to a strategic defeat of Al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups, and ultimately, a safer America.


In order to effectively combat terrorism within the complex legal and strategic landscape in which we operate, the Administration must also maintain maximum flexibility to apply each of the different tools in our counterterrorism toolbox for each different case in order to ensure intelligence is not lost, the public is not harmed, and terrorists are not set free. While this practical approach has been adopted by the current Administration, some in Congress continue to seek to tie the Administration's hands. As you noted, the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, as reported by the Senate Armed Services Committee, includes provisions that would, among other things, mandate the use of military custody for individuals suspected of terrorism-related offenses, even if arrested in the United States. In an important recent speech, Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan expressed the Administration's concerns about these provisions and other proposals in Congress to limit the Administration's flexibility in its approach to counterterrorism. He stated that under the approach advocated by some in Congress:


"[W]e would never be able to turn the page on Guantanamo. Our counterterrorism professionals would be compelled to hold all captured terrorists in military custody, casting aside our most effective and time-tested tool for bringing suspected terrorists to justice - our federal courts. .In sum, this approach would impose unprecedented restrictions on the ability of experienced professionals to combat terrorism, injecting legal and operational uncertainty into what is already enormously complicated work."


I have been working diligently to improve the detainee-related provisions in the legislation. After the Armed Services Committee first completed their work on the bill, I wrote to the Chair and Ranking Member of the Committee to express my concerns with the provisions and urge further changes. The Committee ultimately reported out a new version of the bill with significant improvements to the detainee provisions. Nevertheless, some important concerns remained.


During consideration of the bill on the Senate floor, I worked with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and others to secure passage of an amendment preventing application of the detention provisions in the bill to United States citizens, lawful resident aliens, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States (S.AMDT.1456). This amendment maintains the constitutional protections of due process and fair judicial proceedings for individuals arrested within the United States, and is an important addition to the bill.


Nevertheless, I am not satisfied that all of the concerns with the detainee provisions have been adequately addressed. As the bill proceeds to a House-Senate conference committee, you can be sure that I will continue to seek additional improvements. It is critical that we maintain a detention policy that gives our counterterrorism professionals the flexibility, capability, and resources they need to effectively apply all of our national security tools toward bringing terrorists to justice.


Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.


My best wishes to you.


Sincerely,
A
HARRY REID
United States Senator
Nevada


this feels like smoke up my ass.

What a dick wad. Oops, did I just say that out loud?

[SoNotHer]

P.S. "Regardless of all my, and another other reasonable person's efforts, you're screwed."

Originally Posted by persiphone

so this was the response i got from the Senator in my home state after signing the petition on the National Defense Authorization Act.....

December 9, 2011





Ms. ********
730 ******* RD
******, NV *****-0325


Dear Ms. ******:


Thank you for contacting me about detainee provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. I appreciate hearing from you.


On January 22, 2009, President Obama signed a series of executive orders regarding national security policy. As you know, these directives ordered the eventual closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which had become a potent recruiting symbol for anti-American militant extremists; established a process for determining which detainees can be brought to justice in other countries and which detainees can begin to be prosecuted for terrorist acts; and renewed America's commitment to prohibiting torture. These are tough and complex issues, but, like you, I believe very strongly that strengthening our fight against terrorists required these changes. Our military leaders, officials from our intelligence and diplomatic corps, and bipartisan members of Congress all believe that revising our detention and interrogation methods of suspected terrorists will lead more effectively to a strategic defeat of Al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups, and ultimately, a safer America.


In order to effectively combat terrorism within the complex legal and strategic landscape in which we operate, the Administration must also maintain maximum flexibility to apply each of the different tools in our counterterrorism toolbox for each different case in order to ensure intelligence is not lost, the public is not harmed, and terrorists are not set free. While this practical approach has been adopted by the current Administration, some in Congress continue to seek to tie the Administration's hands. As you noted, the Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, as reported by the Senate Armed Services Committee, includes provisions that would, among other things, mandate the use of military custody for individuals suspected of terrorism-related offenses, even if arrested in the United States. In an important recent speech, Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan expressed the Administration's concerns about these provisions and other proposals in Congress to limit the Administration's flexibility in its approach to counterterrorism. He stated that under the approach advocated by some in Congress:


"[W]e would never be able to turn the page on Guantanamo. Our counterterrorism professionals would be compelled to hold all captured terrorists in military custody, casting aside our most effective and time-tested tool for bringing suspected terrorists to justice - our federal courts. .In sum, this approach would impose unprecedented restrictions on the ability of experienced professionals to combat terrorism, injecting legal and operational uncertainty into what is already enormously complicated work."


I have been working diligently to improve the detainee-related provisions in the legislation. After the Armed Services Committee first completed their work on the bill, I wrote to the Chair and Ranking Member of the Committee to express my concerns with the provisions and urge further changes. The Committee ultimately reported out a new version of the bill with significant improvements to the detainee provisions. Nevertheless, some important concerns remained.


During consideration of the bill on the Senate floor, I worked with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and others to secure passage of an amendment preventing application of the detention provisions in the bill to United States citizens, lawful resident aliens, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States (S.AMDT.1456). This amendment maintains the constitutional protections of due process and fair judicial proceedings for individuals arrested within the United States, and is an important addition to the bill.


Nevertheless, I am not satisfied that all of the concerns with the detainee provisions have been adequately addressed. As the bill proceeds to a House-Senate conference committee, you can be sure that I will continue to seek additional improvements. It is critical that we maintain a detention policy that gives our counterterrorism professionals the flexibility, capability, and resources they need to effectively apply all of our national security tools toward bringing terrorists to justice.


Again, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.


My best wishes to you.


Sincerely,
A
HARRY REID
United States Senator
Nevada


this feels like smoke up my ass.

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by MsMerrick

If there is a separate thread for discussion of teh Citizen's United Case, I'll post this there also.
But meanwhile, if you , like me, believe that Corporations are NOT people, granted the same rights of Free Speech, PLEASE, help correct the Citizen's United Decision with this Constitutional Amendment . This is the time, there is awareness growing all over, even in L.A.
Sign Senator Sanders Petition and share widely !!!

Bumped- sign and circulate. A constitutional amendment is the only way to change Citizens United decision- this is a process that can take years (even without the present polarized Congress we now have) and we need to get going!

Two ways to amend the Constitution

The founders offered two mechanisms for changing the Constitution. The first is for the proposed bill to pass both halves of the U.S. Congress (House and Senate) by a two-thirds majority in each. Once the bill has passed both houses, it then goes to the states. While the Constitution does not impose a time limit on states for which to consider the amendment, Congress frequently includes one (typically seven years). In order to become an amendment, the bill must receive the approval of three-fourths of the states (38 states). This approval can be generated through either a state convention or a vote of the state legislature. In either case, a majority vote is necessary for passage. Often, the proposed amendment specifies the route which is necessary.

The second method prescribed is for a Constitutional Convention to be called by two-thirds of the state legislatures (34 states), and for that Convention to propose one or more amendments. These amendments are then sent to the states to be approved by three-fourths of the legislatures or conventions. As of July 2006, this method has never been used.

[Cin]

Very interesting article. It touches on something I worry about especially with the increase of a privatized military presence - how the military is becoming the enforcement arm of the 1%.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1754...%25_wars/#more

Fighting 1% Wars
Why Our Wars of Choice May Prove Fatal
By William J. Astore

America’s wars are remote. They’re remote from us geographically, remote from us emotionally (unless you’re serving in the military or have a close relative or friend who serves), and remote from our major media outlets, which have given us no compelling narrative about them, except that they’re being fought by “America’s heroes” against foreign terrorists and evil-doers. They’re even being fought, in significant part, by remote control -- by robotic drones “piloted” by ground-based operators from a secret network of bases located hundreds, if not thousands, of miles from the danger of the battlefield.

Their remoteness, which breeds detachment if not complacency at home, is no accident. Indeed, it’s a product of the fact that Afghanistan and Iraq were wars of choice, not wars of necessity. It’s a product of the fact that we’ve chosen to create a “warrior” or “war fighter” caste in this country, which we send with few concerns and fewer qualms to prosecute Washington’s foreign wars of choice.

The results have been predictable, as in predictably bad. The troops suffer. Iraqi and Afghan innocents suffer even more. And yet we don’t suffer, at least not in ways that are easily noticeable, because of that very remoteness. We’ve chosen -- or let others do the choosing -- to remove ourselves from all the pain and horror of the wars being waged in our name. And that’s a choice we’ve made at our peril, since a state of permanent remote war has weakened our military, drained our treasury, and eroded our rights and freedoms.

Wars of Necessity vs. Wars of Choice

World War II was a war of necessity. In such a war, all Americans had a stake. Adolf Hitler and Nazism had to be defeated; so too did Japanese militarism. Indeed, war goals were that clear, that simple, to state. For that war, we relied uncontroversially on an equitable draft of citizen-soldiers to share the burdens of defense.

Contrast this with our current 1% wars. In them, 99% of Americans have no stake. The 1% who do are largely ID-card-carrying members of what President Dwight D. Eisenhower so memorably called the “military-industrial complex” in 1961. In the half-century since, that web of crony corporations, lobbyists, politicians, and retired military types who have passed through Washington’s revolving door has grown ever more gargantuan and tangled, engorged by untold trillions devoted to a national security and intelligence complex that seemingly dominates Washington. They are the ones who, in turn, have dispatched another 1% -- the lone percent of Americans in our All-Volunteer Military -- to repetitive tours of duty fighting endless wars abroad.

Unlike previous wars of necessity, the mission behind our wars of choice is nebulous, confusing, and seems in constant flux. Is it a fight against terror (which, as so many have pointed out, is in any case a method, not an enemy)? A fight for oil and other strategic resources? A fight to spread freedom and democracy? A fight to build nations? A fight to show American resolve or make the world safe from al-Qaeda? Who really knows anymore, now that Washington seldom bothers to bring up the “why” question at all, preferring simply to fight on without surcease?

In wars of choice, of course, the mission is whatever our leaders choose it to be, which gives the citizenry (assuming we’re watching closely, which we’re not) no criteria with which to measure success, let alone determine an endpoint.

How do we know these are wars of choice? It’s simple: because we could elect to leave whenever we wanted or whenever the heat got too high, as is currently the case in Iraq (even if we are leaving behind a fortress embassy the size of the Vatican with a private army of 5,000 rent-a-guns to defend it), and as we are likely to do in Afghanistan sometime in the years after the 2012 presidential election. The choice is ours. The people without a choice are of course the Iraqis and Afghans whom we’ll leave to pick up the pieces.

Even our vaunted Global War on Terror is a war of choice. Think about it: Who has control over our own terror: us or our enemies? We can only be terrorized in the first place if we choose to give in to fear.

Think here of the “shoe bomber” in 2001 and the “underwear bomber” in 2009. Why did the criminally inept actions of these two losers garner so much attention (and fear-mongering) in the American media? As the self-confessed greatest and most powerful nation on Earth, shouldn’t we have shared a collective belly laugh at the absurdity and incompetence of those “attacks” and gone about our business?

Instead of laughing, of course, we allowed yet more American treasure to be poured into technology and screening systems that may never even have caught a terrorist. We consented to be surveilled ever more and consulted ever less. We chose to reaffirm our terrors every time we doffed our shoes or submitted supinely to being scoped or groped at our nation’s airports.

Our distant permanent wars, our 1% wars of choice, will remain remote from our emotions and our thinking, requiring few sacrifices except from our troops, who grow ever more remote from our polity. This is especially true of America’s young adults, between 18 and 29 years of age, who are the least likely to have family members in the military, according to a recent Pew Research Center study.

The result? An already emergent warrior-caste might grow ever more estranged from the 99%, creating tensions and encouraging grievances that quite possibly could be manipulated by that other 1%: the powerbrokers, money-makers, and string-pullers, already so eager to call out the police to bully and arrest occupy movements in numerous cities across this once-great land.

Our Military or Their Military?

As we fight wars of choice in distant lands for ever-shifting goals, what if “our troops” simply continue to grow ever more remote from us? What if they become “their” troops? Is this not the true terror we should be mobilizing as a nation to prevent? The terror of separating our military almost totally from our nation -- and ourselves.

As Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it recently to Time: “Long term, if the military drifts away from its people in this country, that is a catastrophic outcome we as a country can't tolerate.”

Behold a horrifying fate: a people that allows its wars of choice to compromise the very core of its self-image as a freedom-loving society, while letting itself be estranged from the young men and women who served in the frontlines of these wars.

Here’s an American fact: the 99% are far too remote from our wars of choice and those who fight them. To reclaim the latter, we must end the former. And that’s a war of necessity that has to be fought -- and won.

[Cin]

NPR Tries to Track Down Those Millionaire Job Creators
Friday 9 December 2011
by: Peter Hart, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting | Report

Dean Baker (12/9/11) flagged this NPR Morning Edition report today (12/9/11), and it's well worth a positivity.

In the debate over the payroll tax cut, Democrats want to pay for extending the tax break with a surtax on the wealthy. Republicans claim--usually without being challenged by reporters--that a surtax on millionaires would be an attack on job-creating small-business owners.

So NPR decided to go to GOP officials and ask to speak with these small-business-owning, millionaire job-creators. Turned out there was trouble finding any:

We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to.

They did find a few wealthy business owners willing to talk--and they said their personal tax rate wasn't a factor in their hiring decisions.

[GeorgiaMa'am]

Originally Posted by Sachita

As if we didnt know, here it is

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...the-world.html


Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world


AS PROTESTS against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world's transnational corporations (TNCs).

"Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. "Our analysis is reality-based."

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world's economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy - whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What's more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core's tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. "If one [company] suffers distress," says Glattfelder, "this propagates."

"It's disconcerting to see how connected things really are," agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system's behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

One thing won't chime with some of the protesters' claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. "Such structures are common in nature," says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, "is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups". Or as Braha puts it: "The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy."

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

When this article was first posted, the comment in the final sentence of the paragraph beginning "Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power…" was misattributed.

The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies
1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

It's interesting to me that I do business directly with 2 of the companies in the top 10. I can't imagine that it would make an iota worth of difference to them if I pull my business away from them - they are controlling millions (billions) of other people's money, and they would probably still have indirect influence over my money anyway.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

NPR Tries to Track Down Those Millionaire Job Creators
Friday 9 December 2011
by: Peter Hart, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting | Report

Dean Baker (12/9/11) flagged this NPR Morning Edition report today (12/9/11), and it's well worth a positivity.

In the debate over the payroll tax cut, Democrats want to pay for extending the tax break with a surtax on the wealthy. Republicans claim--usually without being challenged by reporters--that a surtax on millionaires would be an attack on job-creating small-business owners.

So NPR decided to go to GOP officials and ask to speak with these small-business-owning, millionaire job-creators. Turned out there was trouble finding any:

We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to.

They did find a few wealthy business owners willing to talk--and they said their personal tax rate wasn't a factor in their hiring decisions.

Here is the link per request:
http://www.truth-out.org/npr-tries-t...ors/1323463415
There ya go.

I didn't post it originally because the story was really just that short.

[SoNotHer]

The Atlantic
Saturday, December 10, 2011


Mr. Washington Goes to Anonymous
By Alexis Madrigal

Dec 9 2011, 5:37 PM ET 20

Welcome to one of the inner rings of The Establishment. We're near Dupont Circle, a short distance to the various centers of power in Washington, DC. The Capitol Building is not so far. The White House, too. The myriad National Associations dot the streets, and the K Street lobbyists and big law firms are a few blocks away. Here we find The Brookings Institution, one of DC's oldest think tanks. When you think of people in suits coming up with policies that become laws, this is one of the places you're thinking about.

Today's order of business was a panel about Anonymous, about hacktivism, about... the lulz. "Radical online activism is a new public-policy challenge, with groups such as Anonymous being described as everything from terrorist organizations to freedom fighters," the Institution billed it.



The speaker charged with explaining Anonymous' idiosyncrasies was Biella Coleman, an anthropologist who has been studying the group and its affiliates for months and months. An hour before she went on stage, she asked her Twitter followers, "The question for today: do I dare say 'Ultra-Coordinated Motherfuckeray' to the D.C. establishment in one hour?" (She didn't, sadly.)

This is the challenge Anonymous poses to the establishment. For those who think it is risky to wear a skinny tie, the group's argot and traditions are so alien that it's difficult to parse what the the group is. I have long imagined some DC lawyers gathered around 4chan.org with looks of horror and disgust on their faces. Even Coleman, who has spent massive amounts of time embedded among Anonymous and 4chan users, noted that the latter site was "teeming with pornography" and that many of its members communicate "in a language that seems to reduce English to a string of epithets." Which would, of course, be the point. Outsiders aren't supposed to understand.

So, when Coleman came to the microphone before the Brookings-blue logos of the stage, I was curious to see how her presentation of the social dynamics of Anonymous might be perceived. She described the group's birth on 4chan and the turn that some groups within the larger mass took to engage in activist politics in 2008, changes that came in the process of griefing the Church of Scientology in Project Chanology. Through that experience, various Anons developed the digital and physical moves that they'd later use on other organizations. She covered several other notable Anonymous and AnonOps (separate group) exploits. What was fascinating about her talk was the way that it gave the impression that -- much as people would like to -- it is very difficult to separate out the different kinds of activities that define Anonymous' do-ocracy. Anonymous, a bit like Occupy Wall Street, is as much a platform for action as anything else, and individual efforts are largely separate from any other effort. This massive decentralization of power makes it difficult for Anonymous to stand for any one thing or even to ask that question of itself as an institution. It wouldn't make sense to say, "What are Anonymous' politics?" even if it seems clear that, in inchoate, intuitive form, there are some.

Coleman also highlighted the way Anons follow a strictly enforced "no fame" policy in which those members who seek celebrity are shunned. But inside the group, individuality is encouraged. The whole enterprise is "evasive, shifty, and nomadic," but not necessarily in a bad way. That style is also a strategy. As Richard Forno, the graduate program director of University of Maryland, Baltimore County's cybersecurity program, explained, for those trying to defend their organizations an Anonymous attack, the very fact that no one controls the operation makes it difficult to strike back. Beyond any technical resilience the hackers build into an operation, the anonymity and decentralization create a social resilience. There's no one person to apprehend, no organization to strike, nothing to hit.

The last speaker was Paul Rosenzweig. Rosenzweig has a classic Washington resume: University of Chicago JD, lecturer at George Washington Law School, visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, various posts at the Department of Homeland Security, and a bow tie. I have to admit that he did not strike me as likely to understand or feel much sympathy for Anonymous. But Rosenszweig did a fantastic job of framing the group's activities for the policy crowd. "I offer the comments with a great degree of uncertainty and trepidation," he began, and then used the nominal title of the panel, "Hacktivism, Vigilantism and Collective Action in a Digital Age," as a way of illuminating different aspects of Anonymous and how policymakers might respond to it. Far from the befuddled establishment lawyer that I expected, Rosenszweig's sensitivity to the multivalence of Anonymous impressed me. We can only hope that other people whispering into lawmakers' ears are as intellectually curious as he is.

"In some instances, [Anonymous' action] is hacktivism of a vicious sort or vigilantism of an even more vicious sort," Rosenszweig said. "And in some instances, it embodies collective action that has been a tradition and core part of what we in America think of as free speech and political activity."

These distinctions matter. If policymakers think of Anonymous as hacktivism, they may see it as a kind of insurgency that they would battle not solely with policing but also with a battle to win hearts-and-minds and rob the group of its moral standing. If they see the group as vigilantes, they might take a more crime-fighting approach. And if they see the group as embodying collective action, "that's a whole different kettle of fish." "If it's a First Amendment sort of activity, the only thing that's legitimate is to police the margins and enforce the traditional First Amendment rules like preventing a heckler's veto, so one part of speech doesn't drown out another part," he said. Rosenzweig tipped his hand a little as to how he sees the group, but with the utmost (and seemingly honest) humility.

"I tend to see predominant within Anonymous, the more adverse parts and more the criminality and the theft of private information," he concluded. "But I'm certainly willing to acknowledge that I might be wrong. And that kind of indeterminacy of the threat, if it is a threat at all, makes it very difficult, possibly impossible [to create] a coherent policy or a coherent legal approach." All this to say that, given the yawning gulf between Anonymous and the DC establishment, I was shocked to discover that there are some among the elites that can be eminently reasonable about the kind of things that Anonymous does. Perhaps given the byzantine and bizarre ways that power flows in Washington, DC, it's easier to understand a strange group that has its own language and plays by its own rules.

From -
http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...nymous/249791/

[ruffryder]

Jay-Z on paying more taxes and the Occupy movement

http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2011...cupy.cnnmoney/

Do you think a lot of people feel the same way Jay-Z does? Wouldn't it be nice to know what the tax money goes towards?
As Obama asks those that make more money to pay more taxes, congress debates and fights this thought. Their debate is that those that make more money will have the jobs and they deserve a break.
What do you think?

[ruffryder]

[atomiczombie]

By STEPHEN GANDEL Thursday, Dec. 08, 2011

In a society in which we're used to taking direction from Presidents and CEOs, captains and quarterbacks, Occupy Wall Street's leaderless structure seems like a formula for chaos. And yet nearly a month after protesters were evicted from the movement's birthplace in Zuccotti Park in downtown Manhattan the exercise in organized anarchy is still going strong. On Tuesday, Occupy Wall Streeters in 20 cities across the country marched in neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by foreclosures. In East New York, Brooklyn, about 400 protesters broke into a foreclosed vacant property and moved in a family that was homeless after losing their house to a bank.
Since the Nov. 15 eviction, much of New York Occupy Wall Street group's day-to-day activities have moved inside. Occupy Wall Streeters have moved in to a donated small office space in downtown Manhattan, with desks for about 50 workers. Crowds have dwindled, particularly at Zuccotti Park, where protesters are allowed to gather, but no longer sleep. Organizers say a smaller but more dedicated group is now doing much of the work of planning marches and deciding Occupy Wall Street's next moves.

(See pictures of the Occupy Wall Street movement.)

Nonetheless, as it has been since the beginning of the movement, the leaderless structure appears to be working. Crowds come together on cue. Messages go out to the media. Lawsuits are filed. Funds are raised (more than $500,000 by the end of November). And the silliest ideas, like building an igloo city in Central Park, get voted down. "There have been challenges, but generally the group has been effective," says Marina Sitrin, a sociologist who has written a book on leaderless movements and is an active member of Occupy Wall Street. "The lack of leadership has been able to get more people engaged in the process, which I think shows how effective it has been."
So how does Occupy Wall Street make all this happen with no titles and no corner offices? By organizing as a network of dozens of working groups, Occupy Wall Street keeps its participants focused on particular tasks they can perform with autonomy and attention to detail. A look at the division of labor:

Idea Generation

The only power at first was the power of suggestion. Kalle Lasn, editor of the Canadian anticonsumerist magazine Adbusters, coined the name Occupy Wall Street and called for protesters to fill the streets of lower Manhattan. Catchy idea, but how to organize this? In August 2011, about 100people showed up in lower Manhattan to talk about it, on the same day that Washington faced a government shutdown deadline because of gridlock over the federal budget deficit. Activists gave windy speeches calling for a list of demands, like a massive jobs program. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, David Graeber, an anarchist and influential activist, didn't like what he heard. He and a few others broke off from the group, formed a circle and started organizing the Sept. 17 march on Wall Street. Graeber proposed the slogan "We Are the 99%."

(See a video from Occupy Wall Street's "Day of Action.")

By the end of the afternoon, nearly everyone had abandoned the original rally for Graeber's less formal discussion group, which became the model for Occupy's governing system. Meanwhile, untitled leader Lasn maintained the flow of ideas from up north. In early November, Lasn told a Canadian radio program that it would be a good idea for the Occupiers to leave the park before frustration and violence erupted. "Now that winter is approaching, I can see this first wild, messy, crazy Occupation phase kind of slowly winding down." He was right about the Occupation phase ending, but not slowly.

The People's Congress

Occupy Wall Street makes its decisions by consensus at what started as a nightly meeting called the general assembly. The group now holds general assembly meetings every other day, which are sometimes in Zuccotti Park or in an indoor public space on Wall Street. Attendance, though, has significantly shrunk to around 100 people a night, from as many as 1,500 before the police cleared the park. Facilitators run the meetings, but anyone is allowed to sign up to make proposals. Crowd members show approval by holding their hands up and wiggling their fingers. Downward wiggling fingers means you don't approve. Anyone can raise a finger to make a point. Rolling fingers means it's time to wrap it up. Since no bullhorns are allowed, the crowd repeats everything every speaker says, a technique dubbed the "people's mic," which has become a signature of the movement.

(See "On Scene: The Night the Police Cleared Occupy Wall Street.")
While the general assembly gets decisions made, a by-product is recruitment. At a time when many people believe government isn't working, the general assembly gives a sense of true democracy. A bit too much, in fact, as the group grew larger, the meetings began to drag on and become more about fund distribution than what the movement was about. "General assemblies need to go back to what they first were, which was a movement-building body," says Chris Longenecker, an original member. "They get people excited." In October 2011, when the general assemblies were pared back to every other night, a smaller spokescouncil was created to make some of the group's decisions.

Getting the Word Out

The revolution has not only been televised; it has also been tweeted, Tumblred and streamed. The Occupiers, mostly in their 20s, have been heavy users of social media to get their message to friends and the rest of the world. By November the group's Twitter account had more than 125,000 followers. Occupy Wall Street has two main websites: one that makes official statements, and another devoted to the group's meetings and day-to-day activities. The latter features a calendar of events and a list of Occupy's dozens of working groups, along with chat boards. According to that website in November, the media working group had 310 members and the Internet group 365.

In a send-up of old media, Priscilla Grim, a former corporate social-media director, launched the Occupy Wall Street Journal, published as a newspaper by a volunteer staff of about 25, many of them working under assumed names to protect their day jobs. On the Tumblr microblogging service, the We Are the 99% site has thousands of pictures of people holding cards explaining whey they're part of that cohort.

Keeping It Legal (Mostly)

Even a group inspired by anarchists needs lawyers — a lot of them. By November, more than 1,200 protesters had been arrested in New York City alone. Early on, the National Lawyers Guild, a liberal advocacy organization, started a working group of lawyers to deal specifically with Occupy Wall Street. The guild has sent lawyers, identified by the special green hats they wear, to marches and rallies to witness arrests and take down names of those who go to jail. The guild runs a hot line that family members can call to get information. Guild lawyers have also represented many of the protesters in court, the vast majority of whom have decided to take their cases to trial rather than plea.

(See TIME's dispatch from Occupy Wall Street's "Day of Action.")

Some of Occupy's most basic needs have produced legal battles, notably the necessity for portable toilets at Zuccotti Park. When police refused to allow them, lawyer Christopher Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union advised the group that it had to apply for a permit from the city agency that regulates street fairs. After much legal wrangling, the city finally agreed to a plan. Dunn acknowledges that representing a leaderless group has been a challenge. "It's not like you know for sure what they are going to do," said Dunn. "It makes it hard to negotiate with the other side."

Mobilizing the Marches

Occupy Wall Streeters may have no leaders, but from the beginning, the direct-action committee has had more sway over the group than others. In the argot of Occupy Wall Street, a march or protest is called a direct action. Unlike most other decisions that go to the general assembly, the direct-action committee has the power to pick and plan its event. Among the preparations the committee makes for marches is holding training sessions to teach members how to avoid violent confrontations with police and citizens.

(See "Taking It to the Streets.")

Longenecker, who has been on the direct-action committee since the protest began, admits that Occupy has made mistakes. In the first Brooklyn Bridge march, Longenecker says, he and others who planned the march wanted to give some of the protesters the ability to block the roadway and ultimately get arrested, if that was what they chose. A group of many hundreds went onto the roadway, many of them perhaps unsuspecting of their likely fate. At least 700, possibly more, were arrested that day, many more than planned. "We learned from it," says Longenecker. "But that march, our mistake, also put us on the map."

Creating a Culture

When planning a protest to denounce the growing economic divide between the richest Americans and the rest of us, you might not expect an arts and culture committee to be high on your list of priorities. But it was for Occupy Wall Street, which has roots in art. A group of artists called 16Beaver, named for the address of a downtown studio where they regularly meet, had long discussed occupying a public space as a form of performance art and were some of the first people to sign on to the movement. Since then, cultural creativity has seemed to spring naturally from Occupy Wall Street: regular poetry readings in Zuccotti Park, giant Halloween puppets of the Statue of liberty and Wall Street's Charging Bull.

(See Occupy Wall Street's unofficial demands.)

Most famous of all were the protest signs. In October, on the night before the mayor first threatened to remove protesters from the park, Jez Bold, Occupy Wall Street's unofficial curator, was busy packing up the signs to protect them. "Some of these are truly beautiful," said Bold. The People's Library, too, was an inspired creation. Situated in a corner of Zuccotti Park, it contained more than 5,000 donated volumes, including books from such leftist authors as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, all organized according to ISBN. Said Zachary Loeb, one of a dozen librarians who volunteered to care for the books: "Information matters. We are feeding people's minds." The books were confiscated when police cleared the park in November, and many were lost, but like so much of what happened in the early days, the People's Library is now a permanent part of Occupy's colorful history.

The question is whether Occupy Wall Street, which is likely to become more specifically goal-oriented now that it can no longer count its success in numbers of days in Zuccotti Park and similar spaces around the country, will start developing the kind of organization that it has so emphatically rejected so far. Dedicated office space alone is a sign that the group is becoming more like other traditional activist groups. Already, the emergence of a high-level committee has caused grumbling in the ranks.

Can the movement stay true to its grass roots and still change the country's direction? Sounds like a good topic for a general assembly.

LINK:http://www.time.com/time/nation/arti...101802,00.html

[SoNotHer]

From the latest Boldprogressives.org email -

We recently told you about Rep. Tammy Baldwin's (D-Wisconsin) bill opposing the proposed deal that would give Wall Street banks immunity for crimes that haven't been investigated yet. 1,000 phone calls and 55,000 signatures from people like you helped catapult Baldwin's co-sponsors from 27 to 48 members of Congress! This is huge momentum, and we're not done yet.

Our Capitol Hill outreach program, P Street (the progressive alternative to K Street), will continue updating members of Congress about grassroots support while asking them to sign on as co-sponsors. Add your voice today.
Thanks for being a bold progressive.

P.S. More good news: The Massachusetts Attorney General recently announced a lawsuit against 5 big Wall Street banks for illegally foreclosing on homeowners. Progressive activism against Wall Street immunity, coupled with the Occupy Wall Street momentum, has undoubtedly empowered investigations like these. And it's been announced that more are coming in California and Nevada. But a deal with Wall Street banks would make these lawsuits go away, so please add your name as a citizen signer of Baldwin's resolution today

http://act.boldprogressives.org/sign...non/?source=bp

[atomiczombie]

[atomiczombie]

[ruffryder]

12/12 West Coast port shutdown.. from CA to WA.

Protesting “Wall Street on the Waterfront.”

Organizers say the shutdown will focus public attention on how the 1% use the ports, international trade, and even the spirit of Christmas to profit off the 99%.

“One way that the 1% amasses wealth is through the ports.
“Shut Down Wall Street on the Waterfront is a coordinated effort from the occupy movement to target the corporations that contribute to the vast inequality of wealth and power in our economic system.”

“The rank and file of the labor movement not only supports the occupy movement, but are a part of the occupy movement. Organized and unorganized working people are struggling to keep their homes and their jobs, while the 1% reaps record profits,” says Kathryn Cates, one of the organizers, “Because the holiday season has been exploited by the 1% to make money off working people, December is a peak business time for the ports and the wealthiest corporations. On December 12 we will show that the holidays are about family & community not profits and exploitation.”

The longshoreman’s union, representing many port workers, has historically not crossed picket lines, community or otherwise.

As of December 5th, nine West Coast occupations have responded to the call to shut down Wall Street on the Waterfront, including Occupy LA/Long Beach, Occupy San Diego, Occupy Tacoma, Occupy Seattle, Occupy Anchorage and Occupy Oakland.

West Coast Shutdown info can be found at shutdowntheport.com.

This action was approved by the Occupy Portland General Assembly on November 26, 2011

[ruffryder]

looks like progress in FL..

ORLANDO -- Hundreds of people, from 16 different cities, were in Orlando this weekend for the first state-wide Occupy Wall Street event.

For months they've occupied city parks across the state.

However, protesters with the Occupy movement have grown tired of just sitting around.

"It resolves nothing to just protest,” says protester, Valerie Cepero. “If you don't have a goal, then how do you know you've made any progress?"

This weekend, protesters worked to develop a list of objectives they hope can pass as legislation. They divided up into small groups and made a list of issues that are important to them.

"We demand our state legislator to pass a non-binding resolution to support the overturning of Citizens United VIPC,” said the moderator of one of the groups.

The issues ranged from insurance, to foreclosures, to elections. One proposal asks that elections be held during the weekend.

"I don't think there's any good reason why an election needs to be on a week day when the people that are most affected by this legislation are not going to be able to take off of work," Cepero said.

Once the groups finished listing their proposals, they presented them to the general assembly. By a show of hands, the group voted for or against each item.

"About five or six items will go on our final list of objectives," Cepero said.

That final list will be delivered to state legislators in Tallahassee January 10.

Members of Occupy Orlando said the gathering would also help to pull the attention away from recent incidents involving law enforcement at Beth Johnson Park near lake Ivanhoe.

Earlier this week, five protesters were arrested charged for trespassing and resisting arrest after code enforcement officers handed out warnings asking demonstrators to take their belongings out of the park and sidewalk. In total at least 45 demonstrators have been arrested since the Occupy Orlando movement began.

Sunday afternoon, protesters told News 13 they would be evicted from the park at midnight. Orlando Police denied the allegations.

http://www.cfnews13.com/

[Corkey]

Well I hate to tell them but employers are required to give employees time off to vote if their work day is between pole hours. Otherwise it can be done before or after work. Weekend elections are a really bad idea if one wants people to actually get to the poles.