Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
How 'Communism' Brought Racial Equality To The South : NPR
Saturday, January 28, 2012
links for your evening
Friday, January 27, 2012
Can I get a retweet...
Occupy London, on Hayek, in the Financial Times
Fans of Friedrich von Hayek may be surprised to learn that the Austrian economist is the talk of Occupy London. Hayek’s observation that distributed intelligence in a voluntary co-operative is a hallmark of real economy rings true beneath the bells of St Paul’s. Occupy is often criticised for not having a single message but that misses the point: we are committed to incorporating different preferences before coming up with policies. In this sense, it could be said we work more like a market than the corporate boardroom or lobbyist-loaded politics – our ideas are radical but also just and democratically decided.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Press Release: Occupy Atlanta Press Conference
OCCUPY ATLANTA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press Contact:
Tim Franzen 404-414-5521
La’Die Z. Mansfield 678-675-3888
On Monday (01/23) at 11am Occupy Atlanta will hold a press conference in the front of Chase Bank located in the Edgewood Shopping Center, 1215 Caroline St. NE.
Like many families across the nation, the late Ms. Eloise Pittman was a victim of one of the worse cases of predatory lending. The Pittman family has been fighting to save the family home since November 2011. This house for this family is more than a building that gives shelter. It is a home that has been passed down generations since the 1950’s.
This past week we have finally been able to get Chase bank to negotiate with they family. The options they have laid out are terrible. They either want the family to leave or pay over $400,000 for a property that's worth a little over $100,000. Their options are unacceptable. When Chase bank needed a bail out they got one to the tune of billions at practically zero percent interest. We will not continue to allow big banks like Chase to continue to make profit off the backs of those that they refuse to assist.
Occupy Atlanta will be announcing our plans to escalate the campaign against Chase bank at the press conference, part of which will include actions that are provocative, and national in scope. The time where Banks like Chase are able to quietly scam folks out of their homes is over.
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Saturday, January 21, 2012
Debt itself is not an inter-generational burden #GOP #fail
Since ownership of the debt will utlimately be passed on to future generations (ignoring the portion that is held by foreigners -- which a function of the trade deficit), the debt itself is not a generational burden.
It can raise important issues of distribution within generations and the taxes needed to pay for the debt can create economic distortions, but many other things also lead to economic distortions (like patents and copyrights).
To carry this point a step further, since deficits that stimulate the economy today are likely to increase investment (especially if they are used to finance public investment and education), they are likely to make out children richer. Furthermore, the Fed could simply hold this debt and use higher reserve requirements in future years to stem an inflationary impact from a greater volume of reserves in the banking system. In that case, interest on the debt would be paid directly back to the Treasury. Where is the burden on our kids?
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Occupy the Courts – Pre-Events, March & Rally (FYI for my Atlanta readers)
Occupy the Courts – Pre-Events, March & Rally
Contacts: Don Dressel, Atlanta Move to Amend, 404-307-2405
Darlene Jones-Owens, Everyday People Occupy Atlanta, 770-328-9036
The January 21, 2010 Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v FEC, outrageously equated corporate money with "free speech." Political cash from corporate sponsors is used abundantly and anonymously in campaigns, drowning out the voices of “We the People.” For three days this week, Atlanta organizations including Atlanta Move to Amend, OCCUPY Atlanta, Everyday People OCCUPY Atlanta, MoveOn Atlanta Council, GA Peace & Justice Coalition, Teamsters, AFL/CIO, Green Friends/Atlanta Friends Meeting, 350.0rg/Atl., GA Sierra Club, Georgia WAND, Atlanta Grandmothers for Peace, Citizens Climate Lobby, and Environment Georgia will join together to protest the second anniversary of the Citizens United ruling. Speakers and artists will deliver short but powerful messages on the impact the decision is having on our politics, jobs, schools, environment, public services, military, and basic freedoms.The press is invited to all events.
Event #1: Sign-Making Party
Wednesday, January 18: 5 – 9 PM
American Friends Service Center, 60 Walton Street.
Thursday, January 19: 2 – 6 PM at
Woodruff/Troy Davis Park, 91 Peachtree Street.
Bring an old shoe to toss at an image of the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court.
Event #3: Occupy the Courts March and Rally
Friday, January 20, 2012 1 – 4 PM
March from Woodruff/Troy Davis Park, 91 Peachtree Street to
Rally at the Courtyard of the Richard B. Russell Federal Building, 75 Spring Street,
“Mourning Democracy” Funeral March back to Woodruff/Troy Davis Park
Monday, January 16, 2012
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Jesus was suffering from "wealth envy"!
Rep. Holcomb proposes drug tests for legislators
Speaking directly to the heart of the matter, Rep. Holcomb points out that those harmed by this law would be Georgia’s poorest children, not the adults who have made bad decisions.“[The family assistance program] is designed to help the neediest of our needy families,” Holcomb said. “Those that oppose it, it’s almost as if many of them are saying food is a luxury item. Which clearly it’s not.”
Georgia’s public assistance program is available only to the state’s poorest residents. A typical family supported with the assistance would be a working mother with two children who earns about $784 per month, or just $26 per day. Rep. Holcomb points out that the $26 per day pays for housing, electricity and food.
Friday, January 13, 2012
John Schmitt on increasing the minimum wage, unionization, and the European welfare state
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Occupy Geriatrics: Seniors in Walkers Shut Down San Francisco Bank of America
What some healthy and spry Occupy Movements across the nation couldn't quite accomplish, San Francisco geriatrics have! KCBS reports that a small group of senior citizens between the ages of 69 and 82 successfully shut down a Bank of America in Bernal Heights on Thursday with nothing more than walkers and oxygen tanks. That's right: No shouting, chanting, tear gas, or window-smashing.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
The only chart you'll need to kill the "Obama the job killer" meme
Greg Sargent is rightly outraged by Romney’s claim that Obama is a job destroyer:
Romney’s claim that two million jobs were lost under the Obama presidency is based on the idea that there’s been a net loss of jobs since he took office. In other words, Romney is taking into account the fact that the economy continued hemorraghing jobs at a furious rate after Obama took office — before Obama’s stimulus passed. But the figures show that once it became law, monthly job loss declined over time, and turned around in the spring of 2010, after which the private sector added jobs for over 20 straight months, totaling around 2.2 million of them.
I think this benefits from a figure:
Does this look to you like a president who “lost jobs”, or like a president who inherited an economy in free fall? You can accuse Obama of not doing enough to promote recovery — and I have (although the biggest villain here was Romney’s own party). But to claim that Obama caused the job loss is indefensible.
Help Wanted: Has anyone seen anything about this "left-wing, radical socialist Barack Obama"
HELP WANTED: Has anyone seen anything about this "left-wing, radical socialist Barack Obama" that Michele Bachmann keeps talking about? I'd like to vote for him. Unfortunately, only one I know of is a center-right moderate who looks and sounds more like Ronald Reagan than Che Guevara. #media #fail
Our current dysfunctional prison system is a giant reminder of the failures of the Reagan Revolution
Hopefully here in Georgia the General Assembly will start to reform our broken prison system during the upcoming session. There is talk of it [Georgia rethinks its prison stance AJC.com] but lets see if those who brought the dysfunction can clean it up....Prisons everywhere are a barometer of a society’s level of development and the huge prison population in the US is a sad reflection on that country’s lack of well-being. Most recent swift increases in US prisoner numbers coincided with the enormous transfer of wealth from middle to top that came from the Reagan led neo-liberal agenda. The privileged elite found it necessary to contain the inevitable unrest and discontent by criminalising and imprisoning it and thus the increase in numbers.
Obama Signs Defense Bill Allowing for Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Without Trial
President Barack Obama has signed into law a $662 billion military spending bill that authorizes the government to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial. In a signing statement attached to the bill, Obama said he was signing the bill even though he had "serious reservations" with parts of the bill dealing with detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists. Sections of the bill were opposed by key members of the Obama administration including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Human rights groups assailed Obama for backing down on his initial threat to veto the legislation. Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch said, "President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law." Chris Anders of the American Civil Liberties Union has also been a vocal critic of the legislation. He recently appeared on Democracy Now!
Chris Anders, American Civil Liberties Union: "This is so broadly written, it would become a permanent feature of United States law, so that 10 years, 20 years down the road, any president could still use this power to have the military pick up people and indefinitely detain them without charge or trial, potentially for years, potentially for life.”