Corporations

John Perkins: Transforming Turmoil into a New Economy


Sun, 08/02/2009 - 11:00am

Monadnock Summer Lyceum 25 Main Street Peterborough, NH 03458
August 2 2009 at 11:00
Transforming Turmoil into a New Economy

John Perkins

For the first time in human history every human being faces the same crisis, including climate change, diminishing resources, and economic turmoil. Because of the internet and cell phones, we all know that the old approaches have failed. It is time, Perkins says, to develop a model that takes us out of war-based, exploitative economies into ones committed to creating a world that future generations will want to inherit. Every major crisis can be traced to corporate goals of maximizing profits regardless of the social and environmental costs. By recognizing that the market place is a democratic voting booth, we, the people, have the power to demand new goals, ones focused on generating a sustainable, just, and peaceful world.

Economist and New York Times Bestselling Author

As Chief Economist at a major international consulting firm, John Perkins advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. He worked directly with heads of state and CEOs of major companies.

Supreme Court gets ready to turn on the corporate fundraising spigot

SOURCE: Slate.com

Slate Magazine The Supreme Court Gets Ready To Turn on the Corporate Fundraising Spigot....The case about the anti-Hillary ad got pushed back till September—and got bigger.

By Richard L. Hasen Posted Monday, June 29, 2009, at 3:02 PM ET


If Republicans were wondering how their 2012 presidential candidate is going to compete against President Obama's $600 million fundraising juggernaut, the Supreme Court seems poised to provide an answer: unlimited corporate spending supporting the Republican candidate, or attacking Obama.

In a Supreme Court term that has had its share of surprises, the court saved one of the biggest for last. Rather than publish an opinion at the end of the term as expected in an obscure campaign finance case, Citizens United v. FEC, the court issued a rare order for reargument of the case in September (before the usual start of the term). At that point, the court will consider whether to overrule its two previous decisions that in 1990 and 2003 upheld limits on corporate spending in federal elections.

Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM

SOURCE: - Greg Palast - http://www.gregpalast.com -

Grand Theft Auto: How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM, Posted By Greg Palast On June 4, 2009 @ 2:34 am

ant-farm_2Screw the autoworkers. They may be crying about General Motors' bankruptcy today. But dumping 40,000 of the last 60,000 union jobs into a mass grave won't spoil Jamie Dimon's day.

Dimon is the CEO of JP Morgan Chase bank. While GM workers are losing their retirement health benefits, their jobs, their life savings; while shareholders are getting zilch and many creditors getting hosed, a few privileged GM lenders – led by  Morgan and Citibank – expect to get back 100% of their loans to GM, a stunning $6  billion.

Bailout bank execs get payouts

SOURCE: ProPublica.org

ProPublica Images/Krista Kjellman
ProPublica Images/Krista Kjellman

Yesterday, the Treasury Department released new rules on how much banks that received TARP money can pay their executives. Among the rules is one that prohibits golden parachutes – defined as any payment to a departing exec simply because the exec is leaving. But an examination of public filings shows that a number of executives at banks that received TARP funds have received large payments just for resigning. It’s unclear if the new rules will apply retroactively. CLICK FOR PROPUBLICA'S FULL LISTING OF EACH HIGH ROLLER THEFT FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

SCOTUS rules against bought and paid for judges, but what about bought and paid for Congress?

SOURCE: Washington Post
Court Ties Campaign Largess to Judicial Bias

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Supreme Court yesterday ruled for the first time that excessive campaign contributions to a judge create an unconstitutional threat to a fair trial, a decision that could have a nationwide impact on whether judges must recuse themselves in cases involving their political benefactors.

In a case that crystallized a growing national debate over how multimillion-dollar judicial campaigns are affecting the public's view of impartial justice, the court decided that in some "extreme" cases, the risk of bias violates the constitutional guarantee of due process.

A five-member majority of the court decided that West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin erred in participating in a case overturning a $50 million verdict against a company headed by a man who spent $3 million on the justice's election.

The truth about Dick Cheney as told by former Dept. of State Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson

SOURCE: washington note

The Truth About Richard Bruce Cheney
Wednesday, May 13 2009, 5:32PM

This is a guest post exclusive to The Washington Note by Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who is former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lawrence Wilkerson is also Pamela Harriman Visiting Professor at the College of William & Mary.

Last night I was on Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC at the top of the hour. But before I came on, through the earpiece I listened to the five minutes that Rachel sketched as a lead-in. Most of it was videotape from the last few days of former Vice President Dick Cheney extolling the virtues of harsh interrogation, torture, and his leadership. I had heard some of it earlier of course but not all of it and not in such a tightly-packed package.

Let's just say that five minutes of the Sith Lord was stunningly inaccurate.

So, when I got home last night, I thought long and hard about what I knew at this point in my investigations with respect to the former VP's office. Here it is.

Congress: Rotten to the core

I, like many others, believed that changing the Congressional majority in 2006 was going to bring about some of the needed changes; the pursuit of accountability being one. We were proven wrong. In 2008, many genuinely bought in to the promise of change, and thus far, they've been let down.

SOURCE: OpEdNews


May 4, 2009

In Congress We Trust... Not

By Sibel Edmonds

I have been known to quote long-dead men in my past writings. Whether eloquently expressed thoughts by our founding fathers, or those artfully expressed by ancient Greek thinkers, these quotes have always done a better job starting or ending my thoughts - that tend to be expressed in long winding sentences. For this piece I am going to break with tradition and start with an appropriate quote from a living current senator, John Kerry:    "It's a sad day when you have members of Congress who are literally criminals go undisciplined by their colleagues. No wonder people look at Washington and know this city is broken."

 

America needs a voting rights movement

In America today, nearly 90% of the nation's voters have their voting rights violated in just about every single election: local, state, and federal.

To quote the popular bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged you're not paying attention."

Consider the grassroots civil rights struggles that forged meaningful voting rights reforms in our nation's history:

  • In 1868, with Blacks representing 14% of the American population, the 15th Amendment prohibited voting rights discrimination "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
  • In 1920, with women representing 49.75% of the voting age population, the 19th amendment prohibited voting rights discrimination "on account of sex".
  • In 1965, with minorities representing 12 % of the American population, the Voting Rights Act reinforced the 14th and 15th amendments, prohibiting the use of various previously legal strategies that prevented Blacks and other non-white Americans from exercising their right to vote.

In each of these instances civil rights activists spoke the language of liberty, self governance, and the right of every citizen to vote in free and fair and open public elections.

We rose up to enforce the civil rights for 11%, 14%, and 50% of our people. So where is the movement to protect 90%?

Throw the bums out, all of them! Senate tycoons kill mortgage aid for Main Street

Written by Michael Collins

Friday, 01 May 2009

The Senate Millionaires turned down even limited mortage assistance to those facing foreclosure.  The magic Democratic majority in the Senate could produce only 45 Yea votes while 51 voted Nay.  Michael Collins goes behind the scenes of another rigged defeat or the interest of the citizen brought to you by inept leaders.

May 1, 2009 – Washington, DC (electionfraudnews.com) – The United States Senate took a swipe at the spirit of May Day in a spectacular show of callous indifference when it voted down a bill to provide limited assistance to citizens at risk for losing their homes.  The final vote was 45 in favor, 51 opposed to Senator Richard Durbin's (D-IL) mortgage assistance bill.  The original version of the bill covered some but not all of those requiring assistance.  The final version was even more restricted.  It applied to only homeowners currently in foreclosure as a result of actions prior to the start of 2009.

Bank Failure Friday—Another Two Go Down

SOURCE: Pro Publica


by Jake Bernstein, ProPublica - April 18, 2009

The drum beat continues. Two banks failed last night.

American Sterling Bank of Sugar Creek, Missouri was the first to be announced by the FDIC. As a savings and loan, the Office of Thrift Supervision was American Sterling’s primary regulator.

Up to their old tricks

An eagle-eyed editor at the Eagle-Tribune, serving our neighbors just to the south, got clued into the fact that some letters to the editor weren't quite on the up and up.

Actually, the real authors, employed by our old friend, the Dewey Square Group, gave themselves away. Here's how the Eagle Tribune sets up the report.

Global Economic Crisis Explained

SOURCE:RollingStone


The Big Takeover

The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution

MATT TAIBBIPosted Mar 19, 2009 12:49 PM


It's over — we're officially, royally fucked. no empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire.

Gregg Moves to Increase Food Safety

SOURCE:Scientific American


Senate bill designed to beef up FDA oversight, enhance food safety

By Lisa Stein in 60-Second Science Blog


Coming on the heels of a sweeping salmonella scare, a bipartisan group of senators yesterday introduced legislation designed to give the feds the financial and regulatory muscle they need to protect the nation's food supply.


Credit Crisis Explained

OK, I think I've got it. The bankers and brokers on Wall Street, instead of investing in new plants, energy generation and cleaning up the environment (after a hundred years of abuse it sure needs it), decided to invest in each other's debts, causing the economy to balloon until it burst.


Judd Gregg and his Abramoff problem

SOURCE: OpEd News


February 13, 2009

Judd Gregg and his Abramoff problem

By Dengre

We were lucky.

A few weeks ago on a Friday, Todd Boulanger pled guilty for his role in the ongoing Abramoff corruption scandal. He was a key member of Team Abramoff and before that he worked for former NH Senator Bob Smith (one of Jack’s go-to Senators).  Boulanger’s plea identified a Legislative Director for a US Senator as "Staffer F" and laid out the many favors Team Abramoff did for this staffer and some of the deeds done in return.

Pop goes Wall Street--The Balloon Economy is Designed to Fail

It's been apparent for some time that "planned obsolescence," the strategy developed by industry to maintain stable profits in response to market saturation and the need to increase demand, has morphed into "failure by design" and infected all sectors of the economy--commerce, service and finance. After all, if stability is the object, failure is the natural route; success, being terminal, demands that we do something new.


Official: UN may prosecute Bush administration, regardless of US action

SOURCE: Raw Story

BY David Edwards

Published: Thursday January 22, 2009

The UN's special torture rapporteur called on the US Tuesday to pursue former president George W. Bush and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld for torture and bad treatment of Guantanamo prisoners.

"Judicially speaking, the United States has a clear obligation" to bring proceedings against Bush and Rumsfeld, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak said, in remarks to be broadcast on Germany's ZDF television Tuesday evening.

He noted Washington had ratified the UN convention on torture which required "all means, particularly penal law" to be used to bring proceedings against those violating it.

"We have all these documents that are now publicly available that prove that these methods of interrogation were intentionally ordered by Rumsfeld," against detainees at the US prison facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Nowak said.

Should source code for electronic voting machines be publicly available?

On January 21 you have the opportunity to attend a public hearing on legislation to rid NH of the scourge of corporate controlled elections. Below is some information about the issue of open source code voting equipment. Open source voting, is naturally opposed by the corporate fraudsters currently controlling America's elections. With the blessing, I might add, of our public officials, such as the NH Department of State and Legislature, which have both granted unconditional approval - providing virtually no public oversight - to the corporate (alleged) fraudster Diebold and its affiliate LHS Associates (whose VP is a convicted drug trafficker) to run NH's elections.

SOURCE: Procon.org

Should source code for electronic voting machines be publicly available?

PRO ARGUMENTS

Public Hearing - Open Source Voting


Wed, 01/21/2009 - 11:30am

State Legislative Office Building
Want to Kill Corporate Elections in NH?

Hearing scheduled for 1/21 at 11:30am

HOUSE BILL 105

AN ACT relative to voting machines for the counting of ballots.

SPONSORS: Rep. Horrigan, Straf 7

COMMITTEE: Election Law

ANALYSIS

This bill requires that ballot counting machines use open source software. This bill also eliminates references in the voting machine enabling laws to machines or devices for casting ballots.