Not the will of the people

Tonight I received this mass-distributed email from Josh Silver of represent.us:

The US Senate just rejected a basic background check law for gun sales despite the fact that 90% of Americans support it. Even 74% of NRA members support it!1 Represent.Us has no official position on gun rights/gun control, but you're damn right we have a position on whether America's Congress follows the will of the American people. And they don't. Our leaders are FAILING US, and by letting it happen, by letting them continue to steal our country, we're failing America. It's time to WAKE UP. Stop writing emails to Congress. Stop yelling at your computer screen. Stop feeling hopeless. Instead, face this simple fact: The insanity in Washington won't end until we cut the corruption and cut the cord between Congress and the Fat Cat lobbyists who run our country. Let's commit ourselves to this fight. Let's commit to creating a government of, by, and for us, the American people. The Represent.Us plan will work — if we all go the extra mile to make it work. Tonight I'm asking you to do one simple thing: Forward this email to ten people who have not joined the fight to get money out. Tell them we must all work together on this issue, or no other issue can prevail. Tell them to become a "Citizen Co-sponsor" of the American Anti-Corruption Act by visiting this link.

Continue ReadingNot the will of the people

Corporate personhood argument fails in Pennsylvania court case

Steven Rosenfeld writes at Alternet:

A Pennsylvania judge in the heart of the Keystone State’s fracking belt has issued a forceful and precedent-setting decision holding that there is no corporate right to privacy under that state’s constitution, giving citizens and journalists a powerful tool to understand the health and environmental impacts of natural gas drilling in their communities.

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Elizabeth Warren tells the OCC and the Fed that their job is not to hide evidence of lawbreaking

Senator Elizabeth Warren educates Daniel P. Stipano, Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Richard Ashton, Deputy General Counsel, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. They look surprised that they should actually be looking out to help out victims of the banks and not helping the banks to hide evidence of law-breaking by those banks that conducted illegal foreclosures. Thank goodness we have Senator Warren on the job.

Continue ReadingElizabeth Warren tells the OCC and the Fed that their job is not to hide evidence of lawbreaking

Bail-in of big banks as an ongoing strategy

Was Cyprus a one-off situation? At Alternet, Ellen Brown says no, and she indicates that the repeal of Glass-Steagall, "too big to fail" and the subsequent $230 trillion derivatives boondoggle should make many of us wary.

The Cyprus bail-in was not a one-off emergency measure but was consistent with similar policies already in the works for the US, UK, EU, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, as detailed in my earlier articles here and here. “Too big to fail” now trumps all. Rather than banks being put into bankruptcy to salvage the deposits of their customers, the customers will be put into bankruptcy to save the banks. The big risk behind all this is the massive $230 trillion derivatives boondoggle managed by US banks . . . The tab for the 2008 bailout was $700 billion in taxpayer funds, and that was just to start. Another $700 billion disaster could easily wipe out all the money in the FDIC insurance fund, which has only about $25 billion in it.
Under the guise of protecting taxpayers, Dodd-Frank makes depositors of failing institutions are to be de-facto subordinated to interbank claims. Brown writes: "The FDIC was set up to ensure the safety of deposits. Now it, it seems, its function will be the confiscation of deposits to save Wall Street." The urgent solution, is to repeal the super-priority status of derivatives, so that the banks themselves lose out to the security of the depositors.

Continue ReadingBail-in of big banks as an ongoing strategy